


The Desolation of Sherlock

by drekadair



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Smauglock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-14 07:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drekadair/pseuds/drekadair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John realizes that Sherlock is not quite what he appears to be. A series of dragon!lock oneshots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I don't generally go for AUs or crossovers, but with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Smaug and Martin Freeman playing Bilbo, I just couldn't resist this idea. So far this is taking the form of a collection of missing scenes, but only my muse knows where this will go.

John Watson didn't expect Sherlock Holmes to have warm hands. He didn't usually make those kinds of snap judgments about people. His time in the Army taught him to listen to his instincts, and he found they were usually right, but his instincts didn't usually have much to say about the temperature of a man's hands. Something about Sherlock, though, made John think he ought to have cold hands. It came as surprise to John when he shook Sherlock's hands and found them warm—almost feverishly so.

At the time, John didn't think anything of it. Later, it seemed significant.

|^|^|^|

There were other signs. Like Sherlock's too-warm hands, they seemed unimportant at the time. The way Sherlock could never bear to throw anything away. The way he was highly territorial, becoming snippy when John entered private spaces, like his bedroom (though he felt no compunction at invading John's own privacy). The way he exhaled forcefully when smoking a cigarette, as though the smoke was a weapon he was hurling at some invisible foe. The way his voice dropped when he was angry—really angry, not shouting-angry—into a range that seemed too deep and resonant for his body.

If Sherlock had been “normal,” John would have dismissed all these things as eccentricities. As it was, Sherlock was so eccentric John hardly registered these few among the many. Looking back, he didn't blame himself for missing the clues. How could he have known? How could anyone have known?


	2. Off the Edge of the Map

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John sees something he can't quite believe.

The first time John saw Sherlock transform, he hardly saw anything at all. It happened during the “Case of the Blind Banker”, as John later titled it on his blog. 

In the firelit darkness of the tramway, he had given up hope. There seemed no way out: he couldn't convince Shan he wasn't Sherlock Holmes, he couldn't escape the ropes binding him hand and foot to that damn chair, and assuming Sherlock had even noticed they were missing—which John thought was unlikely—there seemed little chance he would find them. As the sand ran out—literally—on Sarah's life, John closed his eyes and gave in to despair.

Over the sound of Sarah's muffled sobs and the whisper of the sand drifting away, he heard a noise. His eyes snapped open and he squinted through the glare of fire, trying to see into the shadows. Something was moving back there, something that rustled and clinked. It wasn't a person—John wasn't sure how he knew that, but something about that sound said inhuman. Yet it was focused, deliberate—not the noise a feral cat makes while rummaging through the bins. Whatever it was, it sounded big.

And then it growled.

The noise slipped past all the rational parts of John's brain and made something inside his head short-circuit. He stopped breathing. It awakened the deeply primitive part of him that understood what it meant to cower in the night while some fanged animal, which saw him as nothing more than food, prowled around the edges of the firelight. Not even Afghanistan had made John feel this kind of fear.

Shan stopped talking. Sarah stopped whimpering. In the silence, the hiss of sand seemed unbearably loud.

Shan and her henchmen turned and ran. It came rushing out of the darkness after them. For the briefest moment, as his mind refused to accept the evidence of his eyes, John tried to see it as a train or a bus. It was as big is a train or a bus, so big its back scraped the roof of the tunnel, but had legs, and tail, and rows of gleaming scales. He caught a glimpse of two pale, glowing eyes, and an enormous, clawed paw that batted aside the ballista with contemptuous ease. Then it was gone, springing down the tunnel with a bizarre combination of catlike agility and the cold, sinuous grace of a snake. John stared after it, terrified by its alien power and yet convinced it seemed somehow familiar.

Sherlock appeared only a few minutes later, running up the tunnel from the same direction the whatever-it-was had disappeared. As he bent over the ropes that bound John's hands, John demanded, “What was that?”

Sherlock's voice was calm and mildly puzzled. “What was what?”

“That—that—thing.” Once his hands were free he waved them wildly, trying to convey the enormity of what he'd seen.

“John, I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen anyone or anything down here.”

“You had to have seen it!” John staggered to his feet as Sherlock moved on to Sarah's bonds. “It must have gone right past you!”

But Sherlock denied having seen anything. Sarah, once she got herself under control, also refused to admit any knowledge of the thing that had chased off Shan. John just barely kept himself from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. He knew she had seen it—he knew it! Why would she lie?

“Perhaps it was the stress of the situation,” Sherlock suggested, more tactfully than John could appreciate at the moment.

John stared at the crushed remains of the ballista and knew that wasn't true. Something had destroyed it, and driven off Shan and her henchmen. As a doctor and soldier, he knew perfectly well that fear could play tricks with the mind—but whatever he'd seen, it was no trick.

In fact, he was pretty sure it was a dragon.


	3. Midnight Musings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John deduces something.

Of course, dragons weren't real. John knew that. Everyone knew that. Once he calmed down a little, he understood why Sarah and Sherlock denied seeing anything in the tramway. A dragon—! Who would believe it? Obviously it wasn't _really_ a dragon—but what was it?

Underneath Sarah's near-hysterical refusal to admit she had seen anything, John sensed denial. She had obviously seen it, but couldn't allow herself to believe what she'd seen. He didn't blame her. Sometimes the not-dragon's growl stalked through the darkness of his dreams and he woke up in a cold sweat, his heart trying to climb out of his mouth through his throat. During those times, he wished he could deny it, too. 

One night, the growl found it's way into one of his old Afghanistan nightmares. He woke with a strangled cry and knew there was no hope of going back to sleep. For a while he sat in bed, waiting for the adrenaline to seep out of his bloodstream. His imagination kept trying to conjure the sound of rustling scales and creaking wings out of the benign darkness of his bedroom. Eventually he gave up on controlling his imagination and wandered downstairs, where all the lights were blazing despite the ungodly hour. John didn't mind; a lot of bright lights were exactly what he needed right now.

“I said, I'll take that cup of tea now.”

John stared at Sherlock, who sat cross-legged on the sofa with John's laptop balanced on his knees. Keeping up with Sherlock's bizarre mental leaps was difficult at the best of times. After a moment he remembered that he'd offered Sherlock a cup of tea sometime before he'd gone to bed, but hadn't received any reply. It wasn't the first time Sherlock had completely failed to notice John's comings and goings, let alone the passage of time.

“Right, then,” John said, annoyed. A small, spiteful part of him wanted to tell Sherlock to make his own damn tea, but since he wanted a cup himself he put the kettle on instead.

As the water boiled, he leaned over Sherlock's shoulder and tried to figure out what he was working on. Most of it looked like gibberish to him, but it was familiar gibberish. “More soil analyses?”

“Mm. I've almost got all of London done.”

The kettle whistled and John started the familiar ritual of making tea. He watched Sherlock out of the corner of his eye as he worked, wondering. Sherlock was amazingly observant, absolutely brilliant, and incredibly curious. Yet he had not shown the slightest interest in John's description of the thing that rescued Sarah and himself. Nor had he seemed to notice that there was no other explanation for the Shan running off, or the smashed ballista. In fact, he hadn't made a single deduction while in the tramway.

But Sherlock wasn't the only one who could make deductions. Sarah might be in denial, but there was only one explanation for Sherlock's behavior: he knew something. Something he didn't want John to find out.


	4. I Stared into the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John encounters something at Dewar's Hollow.

John watched Sherlock carefully, but couldn't find any more clues to support his hypothesis. As the months went by, he began to doubt himself. A _dragon_. It was preposterous. Impossible. Maybe Sherlock was right, and it was just the stress of the situation. Maybe he had hallucinated the whole thing.

But every time he convinced himself it was just his imagination and that maybe he should talk to his therapist about, it he would remember Shan and her henchmen running down the tunnel like the Devil himself was behind them. He would remember the shattered ballista, and the whole cycle of belief and disbelief would start all over again.

He had finally managed to convince himself to stop thinking about it at all, since clearly he could find no proof one way or the other, when Baskerville happened.

Sherlock may have been dismissive of Henry Knight's “poetry,” but the moor was eerie. Tromping through the forest behind Sherlock and Henry, their flashlights feeble and weak in the darkness, John felt his shoulders tighten and he wished he'd brought his gun. He had the exposed feeling of being on patrol in Afghanistan: like he had a target painted on his back.

A flash of light on a distant ridge caught John's attention. He paused, letting the others march ahead. The light blinked on, then off, then on again. Morse code?

“Sherlock!” John hissed.

But Sherlock and Henry were too far ahead to hear him. He disliked letting them out of his sight, but, realizing this could be important, he pulled out his notebook and mentally translated the blinks into letters. _U M Q R A_. Then the light disappeared, apparently for good.

John stuffed the notebook back in his pocket. The forest was full of the rustling of wind and nocturnal animals, but alarmingly empty of footsteps or voices. 

“Sherlock!” John whispered again. There was no response. John hurried down the path, straining to hear Sherlock's voice. 

Something rushed through the undergrowth with a deep growl. John froze, thinking, _Dragon!_ But he immediately dismissed the thought. The growl was alarming, but it was a just a growl, like any big dog might make. It didn't make him want to wet himself in fear.

Still, a big dog was frightening enough—and that was assuming it was an ordinary dog, and not some genetically-engineered nightmare. John started running, tripping over unseen roots and rocks, the beam of his flashlight bouncing off tree trunks. The ground sloped up, and then down again, and John was beginning to worry he'd missed a side-trail when he almost collided with Henry Knight.

The man was clearly hysterical. He clutched at the front of John's jacket with shaking hands. “It's here!” he gasped. “It's here—I saw it!”

“Where's Sherlock?” John demanded.

“Sherlock—?”

John grabbed Henry's shoulders and shook him. “Where is he?”

Henry looked around, bewildered, as thought expecting to see Sherlock standing next to him. “He—I think he went after it.”

John's heart lurched unpleasantly in his chest. He shoved Henry unceremoniously past him. “Go back to the Land Rover and _stay there_.” He didn't wait to see if Henry would obey, but raced down the path, shouting Sherlock's name.

To his left the ground dropped away suddenly into a fog-filled depression: Dewar's Hollow. The mist swirled as though someone—or something—had just passed through it, but John couldn't see anyone down there. He jogged past the entrance to the hollow and found a giant pawprint pressed into the soft earth. Beside it was the imprint from one of Sherlock's swanky shoes. Heart in his throat, he raced up the trail, Dewar's Hollow a shadowy pit on his left side.

Something enormous loomed out of the darkness in front of him. He skidded to a stop, arms flailing for balance, flashlight beam arching across the canopy overhead. _A gigantic hound!_ he thought.

But it wasn't. It was gigantic, and it had a long muzzle full of sharp teeth—currently bared at John in a hiss—but it was covered in black-and-gray scales that gleamed with patches of blue iridescence. A pair of pale blue-gray eyes, each the size of John's head, glared down at him, the pupils slitting in the bright beam of the flashlight. John had a fleeting impression of half-spread wings and a lashing tail before the thing—the dragon—jerked back out of the light. John stumbled back, tripped over something, and fell on his arse.

The impact jarred his spine and knocked the breath out of him. In the brief moment that he sat there, stunned, he heard something _crunch_ in the darkness, followed by a grunt—from Sherlock.

John scrambled to his feet. “Sherlock!” 

He ran forward, heedless of the danger, but he'd only gone a dozen paces before he almost fell over his friend. Sherlock knelt in the middle of the path, apparently unharmed. John caught himself with a hand on Sherlock's shoulder.

“What—?” he began.

Sherlock lifted his head. The glare of John's flashlight caught in his eyes, and for just a moment the pupils were slitted and snakelike. John snatched his hand off Sherlock's shoulder and took a hasty step back.

“What—?” he tried again, though he had no idea what he wanted to ask.

“Ah, there you are,” Sherlock said briskly. He stood up, brushed off his trousers, adjusted his scarf. “What took you so long?”

“Your eyes—”

“There's nothing wrong with my eyes,” Sherlock said sharply. “Did you see the hound?”

“I heard it, but never mind about the hound, Sherlock, what about the _dragon?_ ”

“Dragons aren't real, John.” Sherlock brushed past and walked back toward the hollow. “You're imagining things again.”

“I'm not imagining things!” John said hotly. But Sherlock wasn't listening. He cast one swift look over his shoulder to make sure John was following, and then strode off down the trail.

John hurried to keep up with Sherlock's longer strides, fuming. He was not imaging things, he knew he wasn't. He'd seen a dragon, a real, honest-to-God dragon, with wings and scales and everything. There was no way Sherlock hadn't seen it. The things must have been standing right on top of him, and he just dismissed—

John stopped and stared blindly at Sherlock's retreating back. His mind felt like it was racing and yet curiously blank all at once. A distant part of him wondered if this was what Sherlock felt like when he made one of his brilliant leaps of deduction. All of the pieces fell into place.

_How could he not have noticed the ballista?_

_It must have been standing right on top of him._

_Pale, blue-gray eyes with slitted pupils._

There was a dragon. And Sherlock did know about it. Because Sherlock _was_ the dragon.


	5. HC SVNT DRACONES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John confronts Sherlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter uses some direct quotes from the episode "The Hounds of Baskerville," so I'd like to take this moment to say again that I don't own any of this.

John managed to hold his tongue all the way back to the Land Rover. A dozen questions, accusations, and demands filled his head, clamoring to be the first spoken. But when they got back to the car, Henry was there, full of exclamations and questions of his own about the hound—though Sherlock firmly denied there had been any such creature. So John held his tongue all the way back to village.

Sometime during the drive the reality of it—his flatmate was a _dragon!_ —began to sink in and the clamoring faded into a sort of numb shock. By the time John joined Sherlock by the fire with a glass of beer, Henry safely tucked into bed with a sleeping pill, he'd had a chance to think things through and had realized he had no idea where to begin. He suspected that starting off a conversation with, “So I figured out you're a dragon,” might not be the best idea.

Instead, he talked about Henry, and the poor man's conviction that there really was a mutant super-dog roaming the moors. In all honesty, John wasn't entirely convinced it was impossible. His flatmate was a dragon. Were genetically-engineered monsters so much harder to accept? Maybe it was a werewolf. It seemed ridiculous to believe dragons but not werewolves.

The only thing that kept John from dwelling too long on werewolves was Sherlock's insistence that there had been no hound. If Sherlock said there had been no hound, then there had been no hound.

Except now Sherlock changed his story. John stared at him, as he sat staring furiously into the fire, his face twisted and gleaming with sweat, his hands shaking, drinking— _drinking!_ John wanted to demand what was wrong with him. Why should he be afraid, when he could turn into a fire-breathing monster that could eat a dog, gigantic or not, as a snack? Why was he acting like a mutant hound was some impossible revelation, when he was impossible himself? John wanted to say, _Never mind about the hound, what about the dragon? What about_ you _?_

But the words, which had clamored so loudly before, stuck on his tongue. If he spoke now, he could never go back. Sherlock would deny the truth, and then John would push until he was forced to admit it, and then everything would change. John would know Sherlock wasn't human, and Sherlock would know John knew. Things would never be the same. And John, who wasn't one for introspection or navel-gazing, was forced to admit that he wanted things to stay the same. Was Sherlock's secret too high a price for Sherlock's friendship?

So he pretended to be the old John, the John who hadn't seen dragon-Sherlock on the moor, the one who wasn't keeping any secrets. He berated Sherlock for being unreasonable. He implied Sherlock's mind had played tricks on him. He insisted gigantic hounds were impossible.

John didn't have to pretend to be bewildered by Sherlock's behavior; his behavior was bewildering, dragon or not. And when Sherlock denied their friendship, John didn't have to pretend to be angry and hurt. For their friendship, he had killed a man. For their friendship, he'd been prepared to die at the hands of Moriarty's sniper. For their friendship, he had set aside his burning need to know the truth about his friend's nature.

But Sherlock Holmes didn't have _friends_.

|^|^|^|

John expected the hurt to fade overnight, but when he climbed out of bed in the morning it was still there, a raw anger burning in his chest. He downed a cup of coffee and, feeling restless, wandered around the village. Eventually he settled down on a stone wall in the small cemetery and tried to review his notes on the case, though his mind kept wandering. He told himself he'd picked the cemetery because it was quiet, not because it was close to the inn and he was hoping Sherlock would come looking for him.

Sherlock did come looking for him, though only after John refused to reply to his texts. He came striding up the path, collar turned up, hands in his pockets, coat billowing behind him—posing, John realized. He knew he'd put his foot in it last night.

If he'd just apologized, John would have let it go. Instead, Sherlock started talking about the case, as if nothing was wrong. It was too much for John. He hopped off the wall and marched off, but Sherlock trailed after him.

“Did you get anywhere with Louise Mortimer?”

“No.” If he kept to monosyllables, would Sherlock get the hint? But Sherlock never took hints.

“Too bad. Did you get any information?”

John's lips twisted, but not in a smile. “You're being funny now.”

“I thought it might break the ice a bit.”

“Funny doesn't suit you,” John countered. “Stick to ice.”

Even Sherlock couldn't miss that hint. “John—”

But John found he no longer wanted to hear Sherlock apologize. Whatever he said it would be, in some way, a lie, because how could you talk about demon dogs out of legend without also talking about dragons out of legend? He knew Sherlock wouldn't tell him the truth, and he was tired of being lied to.

“It's fine,” John said. A lie of his own.

“No, wait,” Sherlock said. “What happened last night—something happened to me, something I've not really experienced before.”

“Yes, you said. Fear. Sherlock Holmes got scared, you said.”

“No, no it was more than that, John.” Sherlock reached out and grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop. John couldn't remember the last time Sherlock had touched him; the man seemed to have an allergy to human contact.

“It was doubt,” Sherlock continued. “I felt doubt. I've always been able to trust my senses and the evidence of my own eyes until last night.”

“You can't actually believe you saw some kind of monster,” John said carefully.

“No, I can't believe that. But I did see it. So the question is— _how?_ ”

“Yes,” John said. “That is the question. How could there _possibly_ be a monstrous hound running around on the moor? Just like how could you _possibly_ have transformed into a monstrous flying reptile last night?”

Sherlock's lips parted in an almost-suppressed expression of surprise. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said. His voice was too casual.

“Right,” John forced out, hardly aware of what he was saying. “Well. Good. Good luck with the case, then.”

He turned and walked away, not sure if he was angrier at Sherlock for lying or at himself for forcing Sherlock into a lie when he'd promised himself he wouldn't.

“Listen, what I said before, John,” Sherlock called after him, “I meant it. I don't have friends. I've just got one.”

John rounded on him, his temper fraying. “If I'm you're friend, why do you keep lying to me? I want the truth Sherlock— _the truth_ , or I'm leaving.”

He didn't mean he would walk away again. He didn't even mean he would leave the village. Something in his face must have convinced Sherlock of the seriousness of his threat, because the other man looked away, his jaw tight. John waited, his heart beating a little too fast. He wasn't sure what he would do if Sherlock called his bluff. He wasn't sure he was bluffing at all.

Low-voiced, Sherlock said, “You know the truth already.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Sherlock ran a hand through his curls, something he only did when upset or frustrated. “I am... not human.” When John didn't react, he added, “I am a dragon.”

John rubbed his mouth with his hand. “Right,” he said. He turned, walked away, turned again, and walked back. “Okay.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, then took them out and rubbed them together briskly. “A dragon.”

“A dragon, yes.”

“How?”

“Well,” Sherlock said slowly, “When two dragons love each other very much—”

“Yes, alright, there's no need to be like that. I just meant—I thought dragons didn't exist.”

“Well, they do. We do.”

John pulled in a shaky breath. Even though he'd been sure he was right, part of him had still expected Sherlock to deny it. Part of him had wanted Sherlock to deny it. Until now, there'd been a chance he was wrong. He certainly didn't relish the idea that he was crazy and hallucinating things, if dragons were real, what else was real? What else was false?

His entire world was coming undone.

“I want to see,” he said.

Sherlock's brows pinched together. “See what?”

“You. The... other you.”

“What, now?” Sherlock swept the deserted churchyard with paranoid glance. “Someone will see.”

“No, you're right. We'll go out on the moor.”

“What, now?” John started toward the lot where the Land Rover was parked, and Sherlock hurried after him. “John, I don't think this is a good idea—”

“No, you're not going to talk me out of this, Sherlock.”

Sherlock blew out his cheeks in a sigh. “Fine, fine. We'll go out on the moor.”


	6. What Distant Deeps or Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John asks Sherlock a few questions on the drive to the moor.

A tense silence filled the Land Rover as they drove out onto moor. John kept thinking of questions he wanted to ask, and Sherlock kept shooting him sideways looks as though afraid he would ask them.

Finally, John said, “Why are so convinced there was no hound last night?”

“Because genetically-engineered superdogs don't exist.”

John tapped his fingers on the armrest, trying to keep his temper. “ _You_ exist.”

“Brilliant deduction, John.”

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but relented. “If someone proved to you that the Sun actually went 'round the Earth, would that change your belief in gravity?”

Despite himself, John felt his lips twitch. “The Sun doesn't orbit the Earth, Sherlock.”

“Yes, thank you, we've been over that. Dragons aren't real, either. _If_ , John, _if_.”

“Well, no, I guess it wouldn't. Gravity is gravity.”

“Precisely. Just because people believe dragons don't exist, and I believe they do, doesn't mean I should believe in everything else they don't believe in.”

John allowed himself a moment to work through that argument before he tried to counter it. “Alright, but if I didn't know about dragons, what else is there that I—and everyone else, for that matter—don't know about?”

Sherlock chuckled. “John, the number of things of which you are ignorant—”

“ _Sherlock!_ ”

“Fine. You're afraid that, if dragons are real, then ghosts and vampires and the Loch Ness monster might be real as well? They're not.”

“But why not? I mean, out of all the mythological creatures that aren't really mythological at all, why dragons and not Nessie?”

Sherlock shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat. “Well....”

“You don't know, do you?”

Sherlock gave him annoyed look. “You'll just have to take my word for it.”


	7. Did He smile His work to see?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock shows John his other form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse has become a little lost at this point and is unsure where to go from here, so it may be a little while before I update again. But have no fear! Update I shall--eventually. If you have a request, I'll be happy to give it my best shot. Also, I love kudos as much as the next writer, but what my muse really likes is reviews--so don't be a stranger!

“John, I don't think this is a good idea.”

“You said that before. It didn't change my mind then, either.”

They stood in a shallow depression not far from Dewar's Hollow, well-shielded all around by jutting outcrops of rock. Sherlock's scarf was askew, which John took as a sign of his mental state; Sherlock was always fussing over his appearance.

“No, I mean it, John.”

John stopped and looked closely at Sherlock. It wasn't just his scarf: his curls were in worse disarray than usual, he kept fidgeting—Sherlock never fidgeted—and he refused to meet John's eyes. John remembered the growl and felt a tendril of fear curl around the base of his spine.

“Why isn't this a good idea?” he asked carefully.

Sherlock cleared his throat. “Since you have seen my other form—albeit only glimpses—you understand that I am rather large—and if I may say so, impressive—and quite well-armed. The most reasonable reaction of any human faced with such a sight is, of course, fear—or rather, that would be the most reasonable reaction, though I'm not sure any human—”

John held up his hand to stop the stream of words. He thought he understood what Sherlock was trying to say: he was afraid. He was afraid John would see the real him and be so frightened their friendship would end. Sherlock, being Sherlock, couldn't come right out and say it, but John tried to put as much confidence as he could into his voice when he said, “It's fine Sherlock. I trust you.”

_So trust me_ , he thought, but didn't say aloud.

Sherlock seemed to understand what he meant, because some of the tension left his shoulders. He gestured for John to stand back against one of the rock outcroppings, and then crossed the open space so the width of the depression lay between them.

“Just don't... panic,” he said.

John wasn't sure what he expected the transformation to look like. As Sherlock's body began to twist and warp, he didn't think any amount of expectation could prepare him for this. Sherlock's clothes seemed to dissolve into his skin, leaving him naked for just a moment before he was covered in shiny black-and-gray scales. His torso and neck stretched, his legs lengthened, his nose extended into a muzzle and filled with enormous fangs. A tail grew from the base of his spine. Two batlike wings sprouted from his shoulders. A series of quiet grinding and crunching sounds accompanied the changes, as bones bent and realigned, and John flinched at the noise. Apparently it felt as unpleasant as it sounded, because partway through Sherlock made a strangled gasping noise.

In less than a minute, John's friend was gone. A dragon sat in his place.

John took a few deep breaths and tried to calm his racing heart. He knew the dragon was still Sherlock, but it was so big, and its claws looked so sharp, that he had to fight the almost overwhelming desire to either run away or curl up on the ground and have a nice fit of hysterics.

The dragon that was Sherlock folded its wings neatly on its back and curled its tail around its front paws. It looked remarkably like an enormous cat. It also, somehow, still looked remarkably like Sherlock. Most of its scales were the same deep black of Sherlock's hair, but they faded to gunmetal-gray on its underbelly. It had markings on its back, paws, tail, and face: patches of deep iridescent blue that broke up its otherwise monochrome pattern. It was frightening the way a tiger or polar bear was frightening—but, like a tiger, it was beautiful and mesmerizing.

John swallowed a couple of times and managed to say, “Can you talk like this?”

“Yes, of course.”

Despite himself, John jumped. The voice was Sherlock's, right down to the faint note of scorn, just... bigger. Somehow, the familiarity of the voice, even coming from such a bizarre source, allowed John to relax a little. He took a few hesitant steps forward, still intimidated by Sherlock's size. He wasn't as big as John had first thought, when he'd seen him in the tramway, but he was still bigger than the Land Rover. He could easily flatten John with a single paw, or swallow him whole. 

John tried to put that image out of his mind.

Sherlock crouched down so one of his dinner plate-sized eyes was level with John's head. It was the same color as Sherlock's human eyes, just bigger and with a slitted pupil. Cautiously, because Sherlock didn't much like being touched even when he was human, John reached out and touched the raised ridge of scales that overshadowed that blue-gray eye. Sherlock's skin was warm, almost hot, under John's hand, the scales supple yet hard. He blinked at John's touch, and John caught a glimpse of a nictitating membrane sliding under his eyelid.

“O-kay,” John said slowly, taking his hand away. “Can you turn back now?”

“You should stand back.”

John did, and the dragon transformed again, shrinking and shortening until he was Sherlock again. Unable to resist, John stepped a little closer than he should have to peer up into the other man's face. Aside from his slitted pupils, there was nothing to show Sherlock had been sporting a set of fangs just a few moments ago. Even his clothes had re-formed perfectly.

Sherlock jerked back irritably. “Don't look at me like that,” he snapped.

“Like what?”

“Like I'm some sort of... specimen.”

“Oh! Sorry.”

Sherlock adjusted his scarf self-consciously. “You... aren't frightened?” He sounded unsure, which was not a sound John was used to hearing from him.

“No,” John lied. 

Then he stopped and looked, really looked, at Sherlock. He looked unconcerned, but a little too unconcerned. He wouldn't meet John's eyes, and his shoulders were hunched defensively. John realized he must have never shown anyone his dragon-self before. No wonder he'd been so afraid John would panic. But he'd shown John anyway, because....

Because they were friends.

So John took a deep breath and said, “No, I'm not frightened,” and that time he meant it.


	8. Flying is Just Like Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock need to get somewhere in a hurry; Sherlock has a solution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse was much encouraged by everyone's suggestions, but real life got in the way of writing so it took a while to get this finished. This chapter (and the next) are for StArBarD.
> 
> (“But initially, he wanted to be a pirate.”)
> 
> _“Remember the Code, John!”_
> 
> _“Sherlock, they're more like guidelines, anyway.”_

_Early April, 4:00 a.m._

Sherlock never made tea. The one time he'd made John coffee, he'd drugged it. Well, the sugar hadn't actually been drugged, but Sherlock hadn't known that when he'd put it in John's coffee. So John was a little wary when Sherlock perched lightly on the arm of his chair, like a rather lanky cat, and offered him a mug of tea.

Perched lightly, because if he actually tried to sit on the arm it would probably break. They were waiting in a corner of the Ridling Thorpe police station, and the chairs were not exactly top-quality. John was pretty sure the one he was sitting in was almost as old as he was, and significantly more battered—more aromatic, too.

John had claimed the chairs, and the corner, out of a strong instinct for self-preservation. Giddy with his post-case high, Sherlock had become increasingly impatient with the Ridling Thorpe police's insistence that he remain at the station for questions and paperwork. The poor D.I. Sherlock had indirectly roused out of bed had never heard of the famous Sherlock Holmes and was uninterested in accommodating the “consulting detective's” eccentricities. After a rather cutting deduction, and a frightening moment when John wasn't sure whether the D.I. was going to threaten Sherlock with his cuffs or his gun, John had grabbed his flatmate by the elbow and steered him out of harm's way.

“What?” Sherlock had demanded.

John had pointed to the chair. “Sit down and shut up,” he'd ordered. “Or I'll shoot you myself.”

John wasn't at his best at three in the morning, and something in his face must have conveyed that because Sherlock had folded himself petulantly into the ancient chair. With a sigh, John had dropped into the one next to him. 

He'd meant to keep an eye on Sherlock, to make sure he didn't try to slip back into the interrogation room, but apparently he'd dozed off, because now Sherlock was offering him a cup of tea.

“What's in it?” John asked suspiciously. It had been a long night, and the tea looked good.

“Tea,” Sherlock said, in a hurt tone that could have been genuine but probably wasn't. “Milk.” He paused. “No sugar.”

A joke. John's suspicions deepened. “What'd you make me tea for?” 

“It's been a long night,” Sherlock said. “I thought you might need a restorative.”

“I don't see you drinking any.”

Sherlock brought the mug to his lips and took a long swallow. He offered the cup to John again, with a faint grimace. “It's not very good tea, I'm afraid.”

John took the mug. Sherlock was right: it wasn't very good. But it was tea and it was hot and that was about all John really needed right now. It had been a very long night.

“How we got here,” he said, after he'd downed half the tea. “That was actually kind of fun. But can we take the train back?”

|^|^|^|

_Early April, 12:15 a.m._

“John!”

John's laptop flew out of his lap as John himself jolted awake, heart pounding and limbs jerking in shock. Sherlock, crouched directly in front of him, managed to catch John's laptop and avoid a flailing leg without appearing to make any effort at all.

“Dammit, Sherlock! What—”

“No time, John!” Sherlock said. He set the laptop on the table and gestured impatiently. His eyes were glowing with excitement. “We're going to Ridling Thorpe.”

“Ridling Thorpe? It's—” John checked his watch. “Twelve-sixteen in the morning!”

Sherlock had his phone out. “Yes, and if we catch the next train—”

John stood up and tried to stretch the kinks out of his back; he hadn't intended to doze off in the armchair. “Sherlock,” he began, trying to be reasonable. “It's late. Early, actually. I've got to go in to work tomorrow—today. Can't Ridling Thorpe wait until—”

“It can't wait, a man's life depends on us reaching Ridling Thorpe as soon as possible. Remember the code, John!”

John shook his head. “You solved that yesterday—I mean, the day before yesterday.”

“I deciphered them, I figured out what they _said_ —but not what they _meant._ ”

“I thought you figured that out, too. You told Cubitt his wife was being stalked and he should call the police.”

“It's not the stalker Cubitt has to worry about. Dammit! There's no trains straight to Ridling Thorpe, it'll take hours to get there. We'll have to hire a cab—” Sherlock stopped in mid-pace. “Unless....”

“Have you tried calling the Ridling Thorpe police?”

“They won't listen to me,” Sherlock said, and added absently, “Idiots.” He eyed John in a speculative way. John found it unnerving.

“What about Lestrade? He could put in a word with the locals.”

“Not answering his phone. I have an idea, though.”

“I'm not going to like this, am I?” John asked.

“You'll have to dress warm,” Sherlock said, ignoring him. “And I think we'll need some rope.”

|^|^|^|

_Early April, 12:30 a.m._

John hadn't even known there was access to the roof of their building, but it turned out there was, and Sherlock knew about it. John followed his friend onto the flat roof, hunching his shoulders against the cold, wet air that immediately hit him, and tried again to wrap his head around the insane plan Sherlock had concocted.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You're going to turn into a dragon, and I'm going to climb on your back, and then we're going to _fly_ to Ridling Thorpe.”

“Precisely.”

“That's insane!”

“It's the only possible way we'll get there in time. We may already be too late.” Sherlock dropped the tangle of rope he'd been carrying and tried to sort out all the loops and twists. “Are you any good with knots?”

John tried a different tact. “What if someone sees us?”

“I'll fly at an appropriate altitude. High enough to avoid casual skygazers, low enough to avoid radar.”

“You've done this before.”

“Yes.” Sherlock paused, looked up at John. “But never with a passenger.” When John only stared back at him, he looked frustrated. “If you won't come—”

“I'll come,” John said quickly. “It's just—this is insane!”

“Well—maybe a bit,” Sherlock admitted. “You'd best stand back.”

John did, and Sherlock began to transform into his other, scalier form. His clothes faded away first, leaving him briefly naked. John looked away quickly; it was inevitable that two flatmates would see more of each other than was strictly appropriate, especially when one of them had all the modesty of a cat, but John still didn't feel comfortable staring at at all that bare skin. He looked back quickly, though, as scales covered the skin like the world's most detailed tattoo made 3-d. 

The scales stretched and grew with the body underneath them, as Sherlock's human form twisted into his dragon form. Like the first time John had seen him transform, Sherlock gasped several times, apparently in pain. John flinched in sympathy, imagining from the crunching and grinding noises the transformation produced just how unpleasant the process must be.

Unpleasant, but fast: only a minute or two later, a large black-and-gray dragon stood on the roof of John's home, stretching his wings a little. John picked up the coil of rope from between Sherlock's clawed paws and got to work.

Rigging a harness for a dragon was a little more difficult than Sherlock had made it sound. John started with the idea of a dog harness, but Sherlock's snakelike flexibility and extra set of limbs forced him to make a few alterations. Sherlock himself was impatient, but surprisingly cooperative. The only bad moment came when John accidentally stepped on the tip of his tail. Sherlock hissed violently and snapped out his wings, and John almost screamed like a little girl. As his pulse edged out of heart-attack territory, he admitted to himself that maybe he wasn't as calm about his flatmate being a dragon as he thought he was.

“Hurry up,” Sherlock rumbled. “We're running out of time.”

“I'm just about finished,” John said. He tugged on a few of the ropes stretched across Sherlock's chest, testing the knots. “Alright. I need you to come down here so I can get up. And I think you'll need to raise this wing a bit.”

Sherlock crouched like a cat preparing to pounce on a mouse, and John tried not to think about the fact that he was the perfect fit for a Sherlock-sized mouse. He planted his foot on Sherlock's folded elbow, grabbed handful of harness, and swung his other leg onto Sherlock's shoulder, taking care not to kick the wing joint. He was immediately glad for the harness, because Sherlock's smooth scales gave him absolutely nothing to hold on to. He struggled to settle to find a position that wouldn't impair the movement of Sherlock's wings, but wouldn't lead to him falling off, either—a process made harder by the series of bony ridges that ran down Sherlock's spine and seemed to poke him in sensitive places no matter how he sat.

Then Sherlock stood and arched his spine in a long, undulating ripple that started at his head and ran all the way to the tip of his tail. John yelped and threw himself flat against Sherlock's neck, clutching at ropes and scales to keep from being thrown off.

“Wait!” he yelled, briefly panicked. He had a sickening vision of Sherlock leaping off the roof and himself immediately falling from Sherlock's back. “I'm not strapped in yet.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Sherlock snapped. John could feel the vibrations of Sherlock's speech where his legs pressed against Sherlock's shoulder blades.

“If you'd just hold still...” John muttered. He'd made a harness for himself, too, and now he tied it very, very securely to Sherlock's harness, thankful that knots were one of the useful skill he'd picked up in the army. He patted the back of Sherlock's neck, though he wasn't sure how much Sherlock could feel through his scales. “That's it. Let's go!”

There was no warning. Sherlock made one short bound to the edge of the roof and then threw himself into the air. The leathery wings folded behind John snapped open with a sound like someone shaking out an enormous sheet, but instead of rising they were falling, falling toward the street below and the people and taxis who were utterly oblivious to the large dragon and terrified doctor who were about to crash into them. John's stomach plastered itself against the top of his ribcage and he clutched at Sherlock's back with adrenaline-fueled strength, too full of vertigo to scream even though his terror filled his throat and threatened to cut off his air.

Just when John thought they had to crash into the house opposite 221, Sherlock twisted his body and beat his wings, and suddenly they were rising, each stroke of Sherlock's wings driving them higher and higher into the cold, damp London air, defying gravity with contemptuous ease. There was a confused moment as John's stomach resisted the rapid directional change and he felt the almost-forgotten sensation of roller-coaster nausea, but then it was gone and the scream lodged in John's chest transformed into a whoop of delight.

They rose above the rooftops and kept climbing. At first John could make out familiar landmarks—the bright ribbon of Marylebone Road, the dark blotch of Regent's Park—but Sherlock picked up speed and altitude and the chaotic streets of London dissolved into nothing more than a tangle of light. 

It wasn't that Sherlock flew too high for John to make out details; he flew too fast. They were easily going motorway speeds—faster, even. The cold air whipped at John's face and forced tears from his eyes. He tried to watch the ground below as long as he could, but his nose and lips quickly became numb and he finally gave up on sight-seeing. He leaned forward and pressed his face against Sherlock's back; the heat radiating through his scales felt wonderful against John's frozen skin. Wherever his body touched Sherlock's he felt warm, but everywhere else quickly lost all feeling, despite his many layers of clothing. 

Sometimes he lifted his head and squinted through the haze of involuntary tears at the dark land slipping away beneath them. There were fewer lights now, away from London, but sometimes they passed over the bright lines of motorways or the glowing clots of towns. The roller-coaster excitement had long since worn off, and John wished desperately for the journey to be over.

Eventually, he realized they were slowing and dropping, and lifted his head to look at the ground below. It was almost entirely dark, only a few scattered lights showing the locations of a handful of houses.

Sherlock banked, circled around one such lonely cluster of lights, and stooped suddenly into a dive. John was too cold and exhausted to do more than just think about screaming. He felt himself sliding slowly down Sherlock's neck and struggled to make his frozen hands grasp at the ropes. Then Sherlock cupped his wings to stop his descent and John clutched frantically at the harness as the roller coaster ride transformed into something more closely resembling a mechanical bull: Sherlock's body tipped back, then forward, then forward again as all four paws finally touched the ground.

“John,” Sherlock rumbled. “ _John_. Are you alright?”

John realized he was lying flat against Sherlock's back, numb inside and out. Sherlock had twisted his impossibly long serpentine neck and was staring at John with enormous, mildly concerned blue eyes. John had the feeling this wasn't the first time Sherlock had asked him.

Since he didn't know how to answer the question, he said, “Where are we?”

“Ridling Thorpe Manor. Now get down! We may still have time—but only if we hurry.”

“Right.” John sat up and tugged at the knots across his chest, to no avail. In his fear of falling he'd pulled the knots too tight, and his cold-clumsy fingers could only pluck helplessly at them. “It's no good,” he said finally. “My hands are frozen.”

“Hold on,” Sherlock said. “I'll change back.”

“Wait, Sherlock, how—”

Too late. John could feel bones and muscles twisting and warping beneath his legs. He wasn't sure what to do; there wasn't enough slack in the ropes for him to get off Sherlock's back. The question was settled for him when Sherlock's wings disappeared. Sherlock had shrunk enough to loosen the harness around him, and slid off his back—dragging Sherlock down with him.

Which was how John wound up with a lapful of scaly Sherlock—which immediately became a lapful of naked Sherlock. John hastily turned his face away and frantically tried to figure out where to put his hands. Yes, he and Sherlock were much closer than most flatmates, and yes, he was a doctor, but this was a little beyond his comfort zone.

Sherlock, however, seemed unfazed. Once his clothes reappeared—much to John's relief—he untangled himself from his now-oversized harness and started on the knots around John. A few moments later and John shrugged off the last bit of rope. He stamped his feet against the ground in an attempt to regain feeling, and opened his mouth to ask Sherlock precisely what they were doing here.

That was when they heard the gunshot.

|^|^|^|

_Early April, 4:30 a.m._

They took a cab back to London, which was far more expensive than a train but also far more convenient. It was also slower than a dragon, but far more comfortable. John dozed off for a while, and woke to find he'd been using Sherlock's shoulder as a pillow. He sat up quickly and said, “Sorry.”

“Hm?” Sherlock glanced at him, then went back to staring out the window. “Oh.”

John smiled at this typical response and rubbed his neck; Sherlock was too bony to make a very good pillow. He looked out his own window for a while, feeling older than he was; the night had left him with a lot of aches and bruises. Eventually, he checked that the little window between them and cabbie was shut, and asked, “Do you fly often?”

Sherlock was silent, and John thought he wouldn't answer. But then he said, “No. It's too dangerous: someone might see me. Flying is occasionally useful,” he added, “but generally I prefer cabs.”

John remembered the first, adrenaline-filled dive from the roof of 221, and the thrilling ascent that had followed it. He remembered the secondhand ecstasy of muscle and sinew overcoming the tedious drag of gravity. He remembered the vertiginous freedom of flying above London, of seeing wide streets and tall buildings spread out beneath him as unreal as lines on a map. 

Then he looked around at the little metal-and-glass box of the cab, the slightly sticky vinyl upholstery, and the crumpled gum wrapper lying on the floor, and wondered, How could you ever prefer _this_ to _that?_


	9. Flying is Just Like Falling: Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John remembers.

_June_  
When the early-morning light started working its gray fingers through the drapes, John was sitting in the armchair, holding up his head with his hands. He slumped with the weariness of someone who has not woken up early, but stayed up very late: the weariness of someone who has just lost his best friend. 

Two very different memories chased each other around his mind until he was exhausted by their constant clamoring; but each only seemed to egg the other on, so as John's weariness increased his chances of sleep lessened. He thought a cup of tea might help, but he was too tired to get up and make one. If only Sherlock were here... but Sherlock never made tea.

Except that one time, in the dingy Ridling Thorpe police station, when he had made John tea. John kept circling back to the memory of that night, of flying on Sherlock's back across England and seeing windows and streetlights laid out beneath him like inverted constellations: the memory of terrifying freefall off the roof of 221, a victim of gravity until Sherlock's wings caught them.

And the other memory, rising up beneath that older, happier one: a memory sharp as cracked bone, bright a fresh blood.

Another roof. Another freefall. Sherlock dropping like a stone, his coat billowing around him like wings—like the wings he possessed but did not use.

John remembered the _snap_ as Sherlock's wings spread out and overcame gravity. He remembered the _snap_ as Sherlock's body surrendered to gravity and struck the pavement.

A victim of gravity. A victim of Moriarty. 

A victim of himself. Because why would Sherlock fall, when he could fly?

Why would he have _this_ , when he could have _that_?


	10. Inside Information

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has some questions about dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! This chapter was inspired by The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and a suggestion by DreamsofPari, but it got completely out of control and I really had little say in the ending. Still, I'm not displeased, so I hope you enjoy (and leave comments!).
> 
> Because this chapter contains a direct quote from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, I'd like to say once again that none of this belongs to me.

The ideal way to learn about dragons, John thought, would be to ask one. It was just too bad his resident dragon refused to answer any questions. Even seemingly harmless ones, like “Can you breathe fire?” or “Is Mycroft a dragon, too?” were met with evasion and a swift change of subject—or, if John persisted, firm instructions to sod off. As John pointed out, this was a bizarre attitude to take. If Sherlock wouldn't satisfy his curiosity, he would have to turn to the Internet, which was sure to provide him with unflattering and untrue information. But Sherlock was unmoved.

The Internet, although informative, proved unhelpful. John found images of dragons that looked like snakes, or lizards, or had three heads, or only two feet, or no wings. He f0und dragons that could breathe fire, or were venomous. Most were evil, and some liked to ravage towns or kidnap maidens. None quite resembled Sherlock—unless he was keeping a few maidens in his closet that John didn't know about.

After John exhausted Wikipedia, he turned to literature. He struggled through _Beowulf_ and, feeling he'd earned a treat after all that Old English, dug out his battered copy of _The Hobbit_. The paper cover was bent from being stuffed into various shelves and piles and bags through the years, and the spine was so creased it threatened to split in several places. When he was young, John had seen himself in Bilbo: a simple, unassuming man who possessed unexpected strengths and would leave his home to perform great deeds. Now older and much wiser, John still saw himself as Bilbo, but in a new way: a simple man who had gone out into the world and discovered that performing great deeds was not all it was cracked up to be—but who nonetheless longed for more adventure.

And he found, as he turned the dog-eared pages, that he saw a little of Sherlock in Smaug, too: arrogant, boasting, yet clever, skilled at deduction, and fond of puzzles. When Bard shot Smaug out of the sky with his black arrow, John wondered if Sherlock, too, had some secret, unarmored place close to his heart. He hoped that if Sherlock did, no one would ever find it.

|^|^|^|

The first time John really noticed it was only a few months after the Baskerville case, when their latest case ended disastrously.

“It wasn't a disaster,” Sherlock said dismissively. “The mystery was solved. That's all that matters.”

“Rucastle was mauled by a dog,” John protested. “He could have died!”

But Sherlock only shrugged and said, “He shouldn't have starved the thing.”

After the ambulance left with Rucastle, an officer came to take their statements—or rather, John's statement, as Sherlock only tapped his foot impatiently and didn't speak except to correct John in the most aggravating way possible. The officer caught John's eye, tilted her head toward Sherlock, and smiled as if to say, _The things you have to put up with._ She had honey-colored skin, dark curling hair, and plenty of curves. John smiled engagingly back.

They exchanged more smiles, and their conversation became less interrogative and more friendly. The officer leaned toward John, twisted her hair around her fingers. Sherlock stopped tapping his foot and looked sharply at them. Then he took a half-step forward, so he stood a little between John and the officer, and turned on the charm.

During the next fifteen minutes, John watched the officer lose all interested in him and become completely infatuated with Sherlock. The change in both of them was remarkable. John had seen Sherlock act before, seen him pretend to feel emotions John knew he didn't feel in order to manipulate people. John had just never seen him so... _efficient_ at a it. He smiled, he asked inane questions, he was polite, he was charming, he _flirted._ The officer ate it up, while John crossed his arms and fumed helplessly, barely able to get a word in edgewise.

Unable to bear any more, John hooked his hand under Sherlock's elbow, made a brusque farewell to the officer, and towed Sherlock toward the street, leaving the Copper Beeches house behind them.

“What was that?” he hissed.

“What was what?” Sherlock scanned the street, apparently looking for a taxi. Since they were in the middle of the country, John figured this was just an excuse not to meet his eyes.

“You just... _cock-blocked_ me.” And John couldn't believe he just said that, to Sherlock of all people.

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“You aren't seriously going to pretend that didn't happen.”

“It's not pretending if it didn't actually happen.”

That Sherlock would butt in on John's flirtation was merely annoying; that he would lie about it afterward was infuriating. John struggled with the urge to hit Sherlock in the face. After a moment, feeling he was losing the battle, he turned and began walking back to town. If he couldn't see Sherlock's face, he couldn't punch it.

|^|^|^|

That was the first time John noticed it, but not the last time it happened—nor, when he stopped to consider it, the first time. After sitting down with a pad of paper, he worked out that it happened more often, and with less subtlety, after Sherlock revealed he was a dragon, but that there had been a few occasions before, as well. Sometimes he used charm, sometimes blatant rudeness, but always he contrived to keep John from getting a pretty girl's number.

Sherlock's actions baffled John. As far as he could tell, Sherlock was completely uninterested in sex with either gender. It seemed impossible that he was genuinely interested in the women John flirted with—or that he was interested in John himself. A few times, John could put it down to Sherlock's customary indifference to social norms, like during John's disastrous date with Sarah at the Chinese circus. For the rest, there seemed no explanation.

|^|^|^|

The answer came to him while reading _The Hobbit._

“ _Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically for ever, unless they are killed), and never enjoy a brass ring of it.”_

John stuck his finger in the book to mark his spot and leaned back in the armchair, pondering what he had just read. It was evening; the curtains were drawn, and he could hear Sherlock doing something in the kitchen that might explode later. The flat felt warm and comfortable, which was the opposite of how he felt at the moment.

Was Sherlock flirting with these women, not because he truly wanted them, but because they were something he could steal? It didn't sit right with John. Sherlock wasn't St. George's dragon, devouring maidens; it wasn't like he _did_ anything with the women, besides stop John from talking to them.

The image of Sherlock's dragon-self curled up on a great pile of half-naked women, steam curling from his nostrils, like Smaug in his treasure room, passed through John's head. He smiled despite himself. Sherlock didn't seem to horde anything, unless you counted stacks of paper as treasure.

_...besides stop John from talking to them._

The thought returned unexpectedly to John's head. What if Sherlock wasn't trying to accumulate more, but only keep what he already had? What if it _was_ jealousy, just not the sexual kind: Sherlock didn't want anyone to come between John and himself?

John felt hot with anger and annoyance. Before he realized what he was doing, he was out of the armchair, _The Hobbit_ still clutched in his hand, marching into the kitchen. Under the glare of the fluorescent light, the table was covered with chemistry apparatus: a Bunsen burner, a rack of test tubes, beakers and graduated cylinders and pipettes. Sherlock was adding something to a beaker one drop at a time, and did not look up when John came in.

“Is this a dragon thing?” John asked bluntly.

“What?” Sherlock still did not look up. “I'm working on a titration of—”

“Not this. I mean the past few weeks. Every time I try to chat up a girl, you sabotage me. I want to know why.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

John reached down and snatched the beaker out from under Sherlock's nose. The next drop from the pipette landed on the table and Sherlock finally looked up, annoyed. “John—”

John stepped back, taking himself and the beaker out of Sherlock's reach. “Why?” If this was some dragon thing, if Sherlock just saw him as some possession to be horded merely for the sake of hoarding, unvalued but still guarded... he wasn't sure what he would do, but it would probably be drastic.

Sherlock's eyes moved from the beaker, clutched in one of John's hand, to the book, clutched in the other. He straightened slowly. “You've been doing research.”

“Well, you wouldn't tell me anything, so, yeah, I have.”

Sherlock's frown remained in place, and John could practically hear his brilliant mind whirring away inside his head. Deducing where someone had been, or what he had done, from a smear on his napkin or a scuffmark on his shoe—that was elementary for Sherlock. To deduce another human being's emotions or thoughts from a book held in his hand was far more difficult.

“You think I'm stealing your girlfriends?” Sherlock shook his head impatiently. “John, you know—”

“Wrong,” John interrupted. “Try again.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. John knew Sherlock hated being called _wrong_ , but couldn't bring himself to care much about Sherlock's feelings right now. Then an series of emotions flitted across Sherlock's face, too fast for John to catch them.

“You think I'm stealing you.”

When he said it like that, it sounded so cheesy, so much like something out of chic-flick, that John's anger faltered. He hastily set the beaker on the table and said, “You know what, never mind. Forget I said anything.” He turned to leave.

“You're right.”

John stopped in the doorway. He'd asked for this, he'd brought it up, he'd forced an emotional confrontation, and now he realized he didn't want it. He'd wanted to vent his anger, to yell at Sherlock, to be righteously furious. He hadn't wanted an uncomfortable emotional revelation.

He forced himself to turn around. “Why?”

“It is a 'dragon thing', as you put it,” Sherlock admitted. “I told you once I don't have friends—only one. And I am... greedy.”

As an explanation, it was poor. As an apology, it was even worse. “Humans get jealous, too, Sherlock. And you know what? They're told to get over it.”

“This isn't human jealousy,” Sherlock said scornfully. “You cannot begin to understand what I feel.”

John felt his anger returning. “Why? Because I'm human?”

“Yes.”

“That's bullshit!”

John didn't realize he'd shouted until he heard the silence that followed. His heart was pounding, far harder than their argument warranted.

“You're scared,” Sherlock said quietly. “I can smell it. You're scared because you don't want to think of me as inhuman. You don't want to think of me feeling emotions you can't feel, possessing senses you cannot possess. You want me to be human. I'm sorry, John, but I cannot be human. I am a dragon. And dragons are... greedy.”

He was right. John swallowed and stared into Sherlock's eyes and knew he was right. Sherlock the man was his flatmate, his friend. He was arrogant and rude and eccentric, but John knew him and trusted him. Sherlock the dragon was... other, unknown. If he felt inhuman greed, if he could smell John's fear—what else about him was unknown, or unknowable?

“You should have told me,” John said hoarsely. “You should have answered my questions.”

Sherlock shook his head. “If you knew, you would be more afraid. Humans have always been afraid of the darkness. I should never have told you what I was.”

“We're afraid of the darkness because we can't see what's in it,” John said. He knew that in a way most people couldn't. He knew what it was like to be away from the comfort of street lights, to know that something out there was hunting you, trying to kill you, and you might never see it coming. Afghanistan haunted him still. “We need light, Sherlock. I need a light.”

“A light,” Sherlock repeated. So softly, John didn't think he was meant to hear it, he added, “I can't let you go.”

“I'm not yours to keep,” John said sharply. “Which you'll find out if you're not straight with me.”

Sherlock offered him a thin smile. “Very well. I shall endeavor to keep my jealous tendencies in check.”

It was what John had wanted, but it felt somehow anticlimactic. “Right,” he said, feeling irrationally cheated of the emotional revelation he hadn't wanted. “I'll just let you get back to your... titration, then.” Once again, he turned to leave.

Once again, Sherlock stopped him in the doorway. “John,” he said. “Mycroft is also a dragon. As were our parents. And I can't breathe fire. Not yet, anyway.”

John stared at Sherlock in shock. “Not _yet?!_ ”


	11. Fear & Iron, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Sherlock goes missing, John must find him... before it's too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long hiatus, guys! At first I was waiting for series 3 to come out, and then series 3 left me so uninspired that I just didn't feel the urge to write. But then sortingthesockbasket left a wonderful comment that really got me going, so... here you are!
> 
> Speaking of comments, I also received a note requesting more John/Sherlock, so I wanted to take a moment to clarify that this isn't really a Johnlock fic. I think it's a fun pairing, but it's just not what I'm writing here. Sorry, guys!

The first thing he became aware of was a sensation of constriction. He tried to raise his hands to his neck, to claw at the thing that bound him, but his hands were cuffed behind his back. No, not cuffed: chained. He sat up carefully, trying to force his mind to _think_ , but no deductions came except the obvious: _I'm chained up in an abandoned warehouse and I have no idea how I got here_.

He shivered; the gritty concrete floor was cold and his coat and shoes were gone. So was his wallet, cellphone, lockpicks—everything except his clothes. There were enormous windows high in the walls, but most were boarded up and those that weren't were dark with grime. A couple were broken, brightening the cavernous space from true night to mere twilight, but letting in the cold, damp wind as well. Heaps of trash—smashed shipping pallets, old bottles, a battered refrigerator—faded into the shadowy corners. There were no people, and no sign that people had been here recently.

He must have been drugged—it was the only explanation. If he pushed himself, he could almost remember—what? A man on the street, his face blurry. The pinch of a syringe plunging into his neck. The lingering effects of the drug would explain not just his grogginess but also the panicky feeling of being trapped, all out of proportion to the severity of his restraints. He'd been handcuffed before, and in far worse situations than this; there was no reason for him to be this frightened.

He tried to stand, but didn't make it past a crouch before the thing around his neck jerked him to a halt. He wavered, off-balance, and sprawled back to the floor. With his hands bound he couldn't touch it, but the cold against his skin told him it was a steel collar, secured with a padlock that bumped his Adam's apple when he moved. A length of chain, far too short to allow a man of his height to stand, attached to it like a leash, and he followed the chain with eyes to the new and very sturdy-looking bold sunk in the concrete floor.

He tried to stand again, and again the chain pulled him back to the floor. He scrabbled backward on his bound hands, like a crab, and again the chain brought him up short. He strained against it, jerked and pulled against it, and didn't notice the collar had rubbed his neck raw until he felt blood trickling down his back.

 “Steel,” he said aloud, “is an iron alloy.” His voice, small and lost in the empty warehouse, sounded hoarse and unsteady. He realized he was panicking and forced himself to stop struggling, though he could do nothing to calm his pounding heart.

  _Iron_. If they—whoever they were—knew to use a high-iron steel, then they knew what he was. Sherlock slumped to the ground and wondered briefly—very briefly—whether panicking might not be an appropriate response, after all. 

* * *

John tried not to let it worry him when Sherlock vanished for hours on end without so much as a note. He told himself that Sherlock was not only an adult, but an adult dragon, who had managed just fine for years without John worrying over him. Of course, then he would remember that “managing fine” had included a drug habit and only God knew how many close brushes with death—and then he would begin to worry. 

When he woke and found the flat empty, he told himself not to worry. He managed to forget his concern at work, distracting himself with patients and paperwork, but when he came home and found Sherlock still gone, the worry returned with full force. 

Mrs. Hudson hadn't seen him all day and he wouldn't answer his phone. John spent the evening pacing the flat until, exhausted and frantic, he forced himself to go to bed. He thought he wouldn't sleep, but eventually managed to fall into a fitful doze, twitching half-awake at every sound, convinced it was Sherlock walking through the door. When morning came, he crawled bleary-eyed out of bed and called Lestrade.

 “No, I haven't heard from him in days.” Lestrade sounded muffled, as though speaking around a mouthful of food. John looked at the clock and realized he probably wasn't even at the office yet. “Why?”

 “He's missing,” John said.

 Lestrade _slurped_ something—probably coffee. “How long? He wanders off all the time.”

 “Since yesterday morning. He won't answer his phone—”

 There was silence as Lestrade considered this. “I hate to say this, John,” he said reluctantly, “but he might be at a crackhouse. I know he's been clean the whole time you've known him, but....”

 “I know.” John had discussed Sherlock's drug habit with both Lestrade and Mycroft, and they had told him what to watch out for. “But there were no warning signs. He seemed fine.”

 Lestrade sighed. “I'll check out his old haunts today. You should look through his emails, see if he was working a case.”

 John couldn't hold back a short, mirthless laugh. “You want me to retrace his steps? Read the mind of the great Sherlock Holmes?”

 He could practically hear Lestrade's grimace. “Yeah, well. Do your best.”

 He tried. He checked Sherlock's email, his website, his browser history. He rifled through the stacks of papers and bric-a-brac Sherlock left scattered about the flat. He reviewed his own case notes from the past few days. Yet following Sherlock's paper-trail and his brilliant mental leaps were two very different things. John was depressingly aware that he could do one, but had little hope of achieving the other.

 After a hasty lunch, he left the flat and took a taxi to Covent Garden to chase down his best lead. But when he found the Breckinridge, the owner of an upscale butcher's shop, the man hadn't seen Sherlock.

 “I think I'd remember a bloke like that,” Breckinridge said, when John brought up a photo on his phone to show him. “Especially if he was asking lots of questions. Though,” he added, “he wouldn't be the only one asking strange questions about geese.”

 “Oh? Someone else has been here?”

 “This man's been 'round a few times this week, trying to find a goose.”

 John tipped his head toward the cold case, filled with fowl of all variety. “Seems like a reasonable thing to do in a place like this.”

 “A _particular_ goose,” Breckinridge clarified. “Said he'd already purchased it from the grower and it was sent to me by mistake. But I'd already sold all the birds in that shipment, so I couldn't help him—but that didn't stop him from coming back twice more and pestering me again!”

 John couldn't imagine why Sherlock would return to ask the same questions again, but he thought it was worth a shot. “This man, what did he look like?”

 Breckinridge scrunched up his face in concentration. “Short, not much taller than you—no offense. Sandy hair. Glasses.”

 John thanked him and left the shop. He stood on the sidewalk, watching the people and cars pass by without really seeing them. He'd briefly hoped that Breckinridge's curious visitor might have been Sherlock in disguise, but not even Sherlock could lose six inches in height. It was impossible to predict Sherlock's moves, but John felt confident talking to Breckinridge should have been Sherlock's next step. That Sherlock hadn't been here meant John was now a step ahead of him. So what was the step before this? Where had Sherlock turned off the trail?

 As he stood, lost in thought, his gaze fell on a bit of rubbish that had fetched up against the edge of the sidewalk. Frowning, he nudged it into the open with his toe. Someone bumped into him, hard enough to knock him forward a step, and walked on without stopping. His heart beating too fast, John looked from the thing at his feet to the crowd swirling around him, a crazy and terrible idea forming in his mind.

 His phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket with one hand while reaching for his handkerchief with the other. “Hello?”

 “I looked.” Lestrade sounded weary. “I looked in all of his regular haunts, and his irregular ones, too. Please tell me you've found him and I've been wasting my day.”

 John carefully wrapped the handkerchief around the syringe and picket it up. “I haven't found him,” he said. “But I may have found something else.”

 It could have been nothing. It could have been coincidence. But John tucked it into his pocket and flagged down the first cab he saw.

 “St. Bart's,” he told the driver. “But first—Baker Street.” 

* * *

Molly pounced on him as soon as he walked into the lab. her face pale and strained. “I got your text,” she said in a rush. “I mean, obviously I got your text because I'm here, but I mean—”

 John fished the wrapped syringe out of his pocket. “I need you to see whose blood this is. And what was in it.”

 Molly took the syringe from him and pulled apart the handkerchief. “Blood—? Oh, I see, some got sucked in when the plunger was released. You think this is Sherlock's? Do you have something to compare it to?”

 John watched the tension leave her shoulders as she bent over a table. She and Sherlock were alike in that way, able to lose themselves in their work. John tried not to feel envious. From his other pocket he pulled Sherlock's toothbrush, taken from their bathroom and sealed in a plastic bag.

 She took that, too. “What happened?” she asked. “Your text wasn't exactly clear.”

 John described Sherlock's disappearance and how he had tried to retrace Sherlock's steps. When he finished, Molly asked a few questions he couldn't answer and then fell silent, chewing her bottom lip. John hovered over her shoulder as she mixed agar and prepped PCR tubes, feeling useless.

 After a while, she pushed away from the table and said, “John, you're making me jumpy. The gels need to run for an hour and I still need to finish testing this drug. Why don't you, ah, get us some coffee?”

 He went. When he returned to lab almost half an hour later—he'd stalled as much as he could—Molly was waiting with a sheet of a paper clutched in her hands. John handed her one of the coffees and accepted the paper in return.

 It was a printout of the mass spectrometer analysis. The edges of the paper were already wrinkled; Molly must have read and re-read it a dozen times already. “Ketamine and xylazine,” he read aloud. “These were the drugs in the syringe?”

 “Yes,” Molly said. She turned the coffee cup anxiously in her hands but did not drink. “Ketamine is a commonly-used anesthetic. It's a popular recreational drug, too. Any addict could leave a syringe of ketamine lying on the street.”

 John felt his hope waver; he'd been so sure this was somehow linked to Sherlock's disappearance. “But not a syringe of xylazine,” he said, a little desperately. “Xylazine's not a recreational drug. It's often paired with ketamine in tranquilizer darts”

 He turned the printout over, searching for a third drug. The back of the paper was blank.

 “John, wait! Where are you going?”

 He didn't realize he was walking away until Molly's voice caught him with his hand on the doorknob. “There was no atropine in the syringe.”

 Molly shook her head, confused. “What?”

 “There was no atropine in the syringe,” John repeated. “ Xylazine's not approved for use in human medicine because it causes severe cardiac depression, even death. Tranquilizer darts usually include atropine to counteract the negative side effects.” He crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it against there wall. “There was no atropine in the syringe!”

 Molly walked toward him, her hands outstretched as though soothing a wild animal. “This syringe could have been lying on the street for weeks. We don't even know it's Sherlock's blood! Just—just sit down.”

 John didn't want to sit down. He wanted to find Sherlock and make sure he was safe. He wanted to find the people who had taken Sherlock and make sure they never hurt his friend again. He wanted to—

 He clenched his fists until he thought his nails would draw blood and forced himself to breathe deeply. It was hours too late to help the recipient of the drug; whoever it was must have either died or recovered by now. He walked back to the worktable and sat on a stool. “How long until the DNA results are done?”

 “Any minute,” Molly said anxiously.

 “Any minute” stretched. John sat, then paced, then sat again. His coffee, forgotten, went cold. Molly hunched over a table, fiddling with a pipette but not actually doing anything. They both jumped when the alarm on her phone broke the silence of the lab.

 John gripped the edge of his stool while Molly checked the gels. He wasn't sure which possibility was worse. If there was no link to Sherlock, then he was back to square one—but at least he would know Sherlock hadn't been injected with a dangerous drug cocktail and kidnapped off the street.

 Molly straightened. “It's a match,” she said, her voice shaking. “John, this is Sherlock's blood.” 

* * *

At first the boredom was worse than the iron. There was little to deduce in the barren warehouse. From the city sounds that drifted, muffled and distant, through the windows, he knew he was somewhere near the Thames, but there were miles of warehouses along the river. From the effect they had on him, he knew the collar and manacles had an unusually high iron content. They must have been custom-made, but, unable to examine them, he could learn nothing more from them—except that his captors knew exactly what he was, which he knew already. He spotted a webcam mounted on the windowsill above him, but it was in no way distinctive. Whoever had kidnapped him was keeping an eye on him from a distance—but they'd left hardly any clues to their identity.

 Once Sherlock give up hope of making any useful deductions, there was nothing to distract him from the constant cold burn of iron against his skin. The sun rose higher, nearly invisible through the filthy windows, and the shadows lightened almost imperceptibly. As the hours wore on, he felt the iron-cold seep through his body, leaving him sweating and shivering. The urge to change into his dragon form was nearly overpowering, but the iron prevented him from changing and he knew his neck would snap before the collar would, even if he could change. His neck and wrists ached and burned, and he felt hungry and thirsty—though the lack of water might have been for the best, since he had nowhere to piss except the floor and no way to unzip his trousers anyway.

 He yelled at the watching webcam, mocking his captors, trying to reason with them, saying anything he could think of to provoke a reaction. Nothing happened. The warehouse began to darken with the coming night and the air grew even colder. He wondered if John was looking for him yet, and reflected ruefully that his own eccentricities would work against him. It was not unusual for him to disappear for an entire day; how long would it be until John began to worry? Until he called Lestrade, or Mycroft? Would his friends even be able to find him? He had little hope that John or Lestrade would be able make the necessary deductions. Mycroft might, but for all that Mycroft was smarter than Sherlock he lacked Sherlock's experience in solving crimes.

 The darkness became absolute, and Sherlock curled up in a miserable ball on the concrete floor, trying to ignore his discomfort. There was no hope of sleep; with his hands bound behind his back he could find no position that did not send one or both of his arms to sleep. Several times he caught himself speaking aloud, or whimpering, and once he thought he saw John walking out of the darkness. He sat up fast—too fast; his head spun and his vision grayed—and called out eagerly. But John walked past without looking at him and disappeared. Sherlock wasn't sure whether it was a dream or a hallucination, but by morning he was forced to admit the iron was making him delirious.

 When he heard a car door slam, he thought at first he was imagining that, too. The blackness of the warehouse had lightened to deep gray, and he realized it must be morning. The realization brought neither joy nor despair; his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and it seemed like too much work to feel any emotions at all.

 Somewhere in the warehouse, a key rattled in a lock. Sherlock forced himself to sit up and tried to chase the cobwebs from his brain. Whoever this was, Sherlock had to draw him out, get whatever information he could from him. Heavy steps echoed through the cavernous space. _Boots._ Sherlock thought. _Men's work boots, chosen for practicality, not fashion._

 The man who wore them walked cautiously toward Sherlock, trying to look unconcerned and almost succeeding. He was tall, almost as tall as Sherlock but broader in the shoulders, fair-skinned and sandy-haired. After a day with nothing to entertain him but an empty warehouse, this man should have been a delight to Sherlock's bored mind, but every deduction seemed a struggle.

  _High-quality boots, black, worn but well cared for, laced with a new pair of laces tied in a left-handed bow._ Money came inconsistently, but in large quantities. Left-handed. _Battered leather jacket matches his boots in quality and condition, but jeans and shirt were cheap and a little wrinkled._ Buys quality when he can afford it, but in between jobs he's forced to buy cheap when less durable items, like shirts, wear out. Living out of a suitcase. _Faint smell of hotel shampoo_. From a hotel. _Drape of jacket indicates concealed holster under his right arm._ Left-handed again. Professional criminal. _Hair cut short, posture habitually erect_. Ex-military. _Hickeys on the back of his neck, but not the front_. Gay? _Scratches, made by long-nailed fingers, just barely visible at the neckline of his shirt_. No, woman with a strap-on. _Cautious, body language of a subordinate._ A lackey, not the one responsible for his kidnapping. Knows that his prisoner is not human.

 All perfectly sound deductions, and all perfectly useless.

 The man crouched just outside Sherlock's reach and set a plastic bottle of water on the ground. He tipped the bottle onto its side and rolled it toward Sherlock, who stopped it with his foot.

 “Now what?” Sherlock asked. His voice sounded hoarse and cracked. “Am I to open it with my toes?”

 The man shrugged and turned away. “Your problem, not mine.”

 Sherlock surged forward. The chains brought him up short with a crash that echoed through the warehouse. The man gave an undignified squawk and pulled his gun. He pointed it at Sherlock with hands that were not entirely steady.

 Sherlock leaned against the chains, feeling the collar grind against his throat and not caring. “You will regret this, human,” he growled. All of the clever things he had planned to say fled his mind and all he wanted was to kill this man, to tear him apart and taste his blood. He could smell the man's fear, and it smelled good. “I will find you, and your little slut, and everyone else you have ever cared for. _I will destroy your world_.”

 His voice, larger and deeper than any human could hope to produce, filled the whole warehouse. White-faced, the man dropped his gun with a clatter and stumbled away. For a moment Sherlock though he would turn and run, but the man recovered. He picked up his gun with shaking fingers and pointed it at Sherlock.

 “You talk big,” he said unsteadily. “But you're chained up like a dog and I'm holding a gun. So we'll see how big you're talking tomorrow, when the buyer comes.” He backed away quickly, not quite running, never taking his eyes off Sherlock.

 Sherlock hissed at him, furious and helpless. Part of him knew he had made a terrible mistake by losing his temper and scaring off this man, his only clue to his captor's identity. Part of him knew the iron was responsible, inflaming his most primitive dragon instincts. Most of him didn't care. He was wounded and hungry and he wanted to kill the people responsible. He threw himself against the chains in the mindless struggle of an animal caught in a trap, but it was no use. He heard the unseen door open and close, the lock rattle, and then silence fell again.

  _To be continued...._


	12. Fear & Iron, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John continues his search for Sherlock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! “Fear & Iron” was supposed to be only two parts, but this second part ballooned into a 17-page monstrosity, so I've broken the story into three parts and an epilogue. The next two installments are in the revision stage, so they should be posted relatively quickly. Again, sorry for the delay. Not only did this turn out far longer (and far harder to write) than I thought it would, I just moved across the country to start a new job, so my life's been kinda crazy. As always, remember that I love kudos, but I love reviews more!

_And now, the continuation...._

“It would be easy,” John finished, “for someone to 'accidentally' bump into him on the street and inject him with the tranquilizer.”

He looked around at his audience: Molly, perched on the edge of a stool, almost as pale as her lab coat; Lestrade, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor; and Mycroft, pacing slowly back and forth across the lab, idly swinging his umbrella. They had listened intently as John described the past day and a half, and now a tense silence fell over the room.

“However it happened,” Lestrade said, breaking the silence, “it seems pretty clear Sherlock's been kidnapped.”

“Then why hasn't there been a ransom request?” Molly asked. “It's been nearly two days.”

“One may assume,” Mycroft said mildly, “that he was abducted by one of his many enemies.”

John looked at Mycroft in alarm. For some reason, it had not occurred to him to wonder who had taken Sherlock while he'd been wondering where Sherlock had been taken to. He had imagined Sherlock lost, trapped, captive, without allowing himself to consider the ramifications.

Lestrade said, “I can pull the CCTV footage from the area, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to get a warrant for it.”

 _He doesn't believe Sherlock is still alive_ , John realized. He thinks some specter from Sherlock's past abducted him, killed him, maybe tortured him first. He thinks Sherlock's body is lying in some empty warehouse right now....

“Don't be ridiculous,” Mycroft said. “I can get access in less than an hour.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and walked out into the hall.

Molly looked from John to Lestrade. “If there hasn't been a ransom note by now—”

“Sherlock is alive,” John said. He said it as though saying it could make it true. “He's alive and we'll get him back.”

Lestrade dropped his eyes to the floor and said nothing. John strode after Mycroft, tense with adrenaline he had no way to release. The hallway was dark and silent, and John realized with a jolt that it was late. He checked his watch. 11:23. His chest felt tight; surely it hadn't been too long, surely Lestrade wasn't right....

Mycroft was slipping his phone back into his pocket. “I must commend you on your remarkable deduction regarding the syringe, John,” he said, looking up as John stepped into the hall. “It may save Sherlock's life.”

“If Sherlock is still alive,” John said. Away from the bright lights of the lab it was harder to maintain the pretense of hope. “It's been almost two days, Mycroft.”

“Sherlock is extremely resourceful.”

He seemed so unconcerned that John wanted to shake him. “He's also a—” John glanced around the empty hall and lowered his voice. “—a _dragon_. If he's not dead, why isn't he back by now? How could someone possibly keep a dragon against his will?”

A flicker of surprise passed briefly over Mycroft's face. He raised his eyes to the ceiling as though asking the dark fluorescent above for patience. “I always told my brother sentiment would be his downfall,” he said, apparently to the light bulb. When he back at John, his expression was wry. “Although your confidence in our abilities is flattering, it is somewhat unwarranted. We are not invincible.”

John shook his head. “What are you saying?”

“There are ways to neutralize any so-called 'supernatural' creature,” Mycroft said, with the air of someone imparting great wisdom to a somewhat dull student. “For dragons and other fae, iron is particularly effective. It causes sickness and pain, and prevents us from changing shape.”

A dozen questions sprang to the tip of John's tongue. He tried to pick the most important. “Sherlock handles metal all the time—kitchen knives, guns, cars. It never seems to bother him.”

“Most items made of steel contain too little pure iron to cause us harm.”

“That just makes it more likely he's already dead!” John said, dismayed. “Whoever took him is hardly likely to have a pair of iron handcuffs lying around.”

“Unless whoever took him already knew his true nature.”

John's first thought was to deny that as impossible. He had lived with Sherlock for months before figuring out Sherlock was a dragon, and even that had been more luck than deduction. But if it meant there was still a chance Sherlock was alive...

“How do you know?” he asked, a little desperately.

“I don't,” Mycroft admitted. “But the dosage and combination of drugs in the syringe were an unusual choice for a human target, don't you agree?”

It was only a little hope—but John would take what he could get.

* * *

_We'll see how big you're talking tomorrow, when the buyer comes._

Sherlock slumped on the cold floor, shaking with iron-sickness and the aftereffects of rage. The man's words echoed around his head. He knew he should be doing something about them, but he couldn't remember what it was.

After a while he rolled the water bottle over to him with his toes and pinioned it firmly between his feet. He leaned over and gripped the cap with his teeth and began twisting the bottle with his feet. It was slow going, and the little muscles in his arches kept cramping. Eventually the cap came free. He spat it out, wrapped his lips around the mouth of the bottle, and tilted his head back. Sweet, cold water spilled down his throat and he swallowed, choked, and swallowed more.

When half the bottle was gone he gripped it between his feet again and rolled on his back so he could splash the rest of it on his face. He sat up, shaking water out of his eyes and feeling more clear-headed than he had in the past twenty-four hours.

_The buyer._

He'd lied to John, all those months ago. Well, not _lied_ , precisely, but misled. There were things besides dragons, things most people believed were the stuff of myths and stories but were just as real—and just as inhuman—as Sherlock.

And there were humans who hunted them.

He was aware of this secret community, but only peripherally. He lived and worked in the real world, the human world, and left the other to the freaks and monsters. It seemed, however, that the other world was not as willing to ignore him as he was to ignore it. There must be some sort of black market for supernatural creatures, and Sherlock wondered how much a young dragon would fetch on it. Did they intend to slaughter him for his blood and scales? Or did some wealthy sportsman want to shoot him in a canned hunt? He didn't have enough information to make any deductions, but he knew they would need him in his dragon form. Whatever they wanted him for, at some point they would remove the chains, when they did....

He tipped back his head to stare at the watching webcam. Cold water trickled down the collar of his shirt, but he didn't care. When they removed the chains, he would make them pay for what they had done to him.

* * *

Mycroft had been optimistic: it was closer to two hours before the promised CCTV footage arrived. They crowded around one of the lab's computers, staring over Mycroft's shoulder as he brought up the video. Four scenes, rendered in shades of gray, filled the monitor: cars rushing past, people walking, most in groups, some in evening dress. The timestamp in the bottom corner of each square read 1:16 AM.

“Go back,” John said. “He must have been kidnapped between eight and six yesterday.”

Mycroft clicked, and the scenes changed. The streets were brighter now, and crowded with more people. Two of the cameras showed part of the shops on either side of Breckinridge's, though neither showed the butcher's shop itself. The timestamp read 8:00 AM. Mycroft clicked again, and the people and cars began moving in double-time.

John stared at the screen, trying to watch all four images simultaneously. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he was determined not to miss it. Time stretched. His lower back began to ache. Mycroft sat perfectly still, and Molly remained focused on the screen, but Lestrade shifted his weight from one foot to another, no doubt troubled by his own back.

“There!” Molly said. “What's that?”

Mycroft stopped at 12:04 PM and rewound a few minutes. They watched a cab pull into an open space just behind Breckinridge's shop. It idled, presumably while the passenger paid his fare. A white panel van double-parked just behind the cab and two men climbed out. One leaned casually against the wall of the shop, but the other began walking, his hands stuffed into his coat pockets.

Sherlock climbed out of the cab. Even in the tiny, black-and-white frame, his tall figure and mop of curly hair were unmistakable. John gripped the back of Mycroft's chair, surprised by the surge of emotion that filled him. _Don't be dead_ , he thought furiously at the blurry image. _Don't be dead_.

Sherlock sprang onto the sidewalk just as the second man walked by. The man bumped into him, knocking him back a step, and then kept walking. Sherlock straightened his coat and turned to walk away—and then stopped and looked back at the man who had run into him.

“He must have seen something,” Lestrade murmured. “Some clue. Too bad it was too late.”

It was too late. Sherlock took one step after the man. His second step was more of a stagger. The first man hurried forward and caught Sherlock's arm solicitously. Sherlock resisted, but only weakly, and the man led him into the van without a struggle. To anyone on the street who bothered to notice, it probably just looked a man helping his sick friend, or a good samaritan helping a stranger. The van slid into traffic and disappeared.

“Get me the plates for that van,” Lestrade said, straightening. “I'll put an APB on it, start looking on the streets. You lot see if you can follow it through the cams.”

Mycroft had already switched to a new viewpoint. “We'll keep you informed.”

They painstakingly tracked the van from camera to camera, intersection to intersection. The driver zig-zagged erratically, perhaps trying to throw off pursuit, perhaps aware he could be tracked by CCTV. At four in the morning, Lestrade called from the station to tell them they'd located the van's owners.

“Rented under a false name,” he told John. “We're trying to trace the fake I.D., but so far no luck. No sign of the van, either. How's it going on your end?”

“Slow.”

They lost the van twice, and had to search in widening spirals to find it again. The hours slipped by. Lestrade called three more times, anxious for news. Molly went out to get coffee, which John drank gratefully. He felt like he had lead weights on his eyelids.

Near the Canning Town waterfront they lost the van for a third time and could not find it again. They spent almost an hour combing through the cameras, searching for a new angle, a new view, but found none.

Mycroft pushed away from the computer and rubbed his face. “They must have turned into a private warehouse complex. There is no shortage of abandonded buildings in the area.”

Rumpled and bleary-eyed, Mycroft looked more human than John had ever seen him. He found he liked him better for it. “We'll have to go in and look the old-fashioned way,” he said.

“Shouldn't we wait for Greg?” Molly asked. “And, um, backup?”

John was already reaching for his coat. The gun in the right-hand pocket bumped reassuringly against his hip as he pulled it on. “We'll call on the way over.” He glanced over at her and saw she had stripped off her lab coat and was reaching for her jacket. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

She was breathless and pink-cheeked. “Coming with you,” she said.

“No,” John said firmly. “Absolutely not. It's too dangerous.”

“ _You're_ going.”

“John has survived a war zone,” Mycroft said mildly. “And I believe he has a gun in his pocket.”

Molly glanced a quickly at John's coat, and took a different tack. “What about you?” she asked Mycroft. “Have you been to Afghanistan, too?”

John would not have been surprised if Mycroft told her he had. But Mycroft only gave her a thin smile. “I am not without both experience and defenses,” he said.

Frustrated, she turned back to John. “Sherlock is my friend, too,” she said. “I can't just sit here while he's in danger!”

“You're not coming,” John repeated.

“Then you're not going.” She stepped between him and the door, her arms crossed stubbornly over her chest. She looked frightened, but resolute.

John grimaced in annoyance. He couldn't fault her reasons, but he didn't like the thought of bringing a civilian into such a potentially dangerous situation. One look at her face, though, told him she wouldn't be dissuaded.

“Fine,” he said. “But you're staying in the car.”

* * *

After two sleepless nights, the exhaustion was almost as bad as the thirst and the constant burn of the iron. Sherlock slipped in and out of consciousness as the light faded and slowly disappeared. He began to wonder whether he would be strong enough to attack when the time came; surely they would come prepared with guns and tranquilizers? He tried to from plans for all the possible contingencies, but his mind kept wandering.

The sound of several car doors slamming roused him from almost-sleep. He forced himself to sit up, cross-legged on the cold floor. Gray dawn light leaked through the broken windows, but everything seemed hazy and dull. After a moment, he realized the problem was with his vision, not the light.

He heard the lock rattle, and five people walked into view. One was the tall, sandy-haired man who had brought him water yesterday. A shorter, stockier man looked like more hired muscle. Between them walked a slight, dark-skinned woman in a business suit and heels, who Sherlock assumed was their employer. 

Holding himself aloof from these three was a thin man in an expensive suit. Despite his graying hair, his face was unlined and firm; straight gray eyebrows frowned over a pair of cold gray eyes. He was closely followed by a well-muscled woman with a gun under her battered leather jacket. Something about her scent was odd, but Sherlock couldn't figure out what it was.

The group stopped well out of Sherlock's reach. The gray-haired man spoke first, in a flat American accent. 

“It doesn't look like much.”

Sherlock hissed hatefully at him, and was pleased when the woman in the leather jacket dropped her hand to her weapon.

The dark-skinned woman smiled thinly. “Have you ever seen a dragon, Mr. Wertheim?”

“No.”

“They don't look any different than us like this, but when they transform.... Judging from this one's human shape, it's true form is magnificent.”

“It had better be,” Wertheim said drily. “Considering how much you're asking for it.”

“Dragons are rare,” the woman said, chidingly. “This variety is found almost exclusively in the British Isles. They're difficult to locate and extremely dangerous. I assure you, this beast is worth every pound.”

Wertheim leaned toward Sherlock, but did not seem quite bold enough to step closer. “How do you make it change?”

Sherlock realized he was growling, low and continuous. He was distantly aware that this was a key moment, his chance to gather the information he needed for his escape, but their words seemed like little more than blurs of sound. He stared at the gray-haired man's throat and willed himself to transform. His vision grayed and the warehouse spun dizzily around him, but he remained human.

“—your problem,” the woman was saying.

“Now, hold on,” Wertheim said sharply. “I'm paying you a lot of money for this creature, and I expect to get what I pay for—and I'm paying for a dragon, not a man chained to the floor of a warehouse!”

“Quiet!” The woman in the leather jacket spoke suddenly in husky voice. She drew her gun from the holster at her hip, and turned in a slow circle, head cocked. “Someone's here.”

The dark-skinned woman eyed her customer's bodyguard speculatively. She flicked a glance at her two companions. “Jones, Flynn, check the lot.”

The two men drew their guns and vanished into the back of the warehouse. For a moment it was silent, except for Sherlock's snarls. Then two shots went off, loud in the morning stillness. Someone shouted in shock or pain. The shout cut through the haze that filled Sherlock's head, and he stiffened in disbelief. He knew that voice.

_John._

John was outside the warehouse.

John was being shot at.

_John was in danger._

Sherlock roared and lunged forward. The chain caught him short and he strained against the collar until the metal cut into his throat and blood trickled down between his collarbones. He reached for his dragon-shape, fighting iron with rage, and felt his bones shift and grind as the change rippled impotently beneath his skin. His vision began to darken, but he forced himself to hold on to consciousness. He had to protect John.

_He had to protect John._

_**To be continued....** _


	13. Fear & Iron, Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John comes to Sherlock's rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BAMF!John!!! BAMF!Molly!!! Heck, there's even a little BAMF!Anthea!!! Well, okay, Anthea's BAMF moments are more in the Coda (coming soon!). But there's still a lot of action packed into this chapter, so buckle your seatbelts!
> 
> On a different note, I received a question regarding fanart. If someone were to create fanart based on my story I would a) be extraordinary, fantastically, and wonderfully honored, and b) be extremely pleased to post a link to wherever the artist chose to showcase it so that all my readers could “ooh” and “aah” over it. I believe you can upload art directly to Archive of Our Own.
> 
> On yet another note, someone generously offered me a britpick in their review. In case you can't tell from the way I spell “color,” I'm American, and while I include those Britishisms I know of, there are plenty that pass me by. So if you spot something, please feel free to let me know! I always appreciate constructive criticism.

“There.”

At Mycroft's direction, Anthea turned the sleek, black car into a driveway. From the back seat, John and Molly strained forward, trying to see what had caught Mycroft's attention. Past the long-abandoned guard station, the drive curved down to a handful of dilapidated warehouses coved with layers of graffiti. In the dim, early-morning light, John could see the parking lot was filled with trash and weeds.

“It looks the same as the last three,” Anthea said, frustrated. “How do you know it's this one?”

“Call it a hunch,” Mycroft said.

John snorted quietly to himself. If Mycroft was following a hunch, John would turn into a dragon and fly. Mycroft had defined a ten-block search zone along the waterfront and instructed Lestrade, who had mustered a small army of police, to begin at the western end. Yet he had begun his personal search at the eastern end. John suspected that he wanted to be the one to find Sherlock—he just didn't know why.

There was a flimsy sercurity gate blocking the driveway, but Anthea slammed her foot down on the gas and the car smashed through the gate with a crash and a tortured shriek. A broken piece of wood bounced off the windshield, leaving a spiderweb of cracks across the driver's side. Molly jumped gave a small scream.

“Really, Anthea,” Mycroft sighed, “was that truly necessary?”

Anthea only smiled.

They cruised slowly through the complex. Parked alongside the third warehouse, shielded from the road, they found the white panel van. Beside it was a sleek, black car nearly identical to Mycroft's. Anthea carefully reversed until the two cars were out of sight and parked. John had the door open before the car stopped moving.

“Wait!” Molly said. “We should wait for Lestrade. He's only a few blocks away.”

John hesitated. It was the smart thing to do; he knew that. But the thought of waiting, when Sherlock was so close, was unbearable. “Call him,” he said. “I'm going to look around, see if I can find anything.”

He shut the door and walked around the corner of the warehouse. A moment later he heard another door open and close and Mycroft's footsteps on the pavement behind him.

“A moment, John.”

John turned, impatient. His hand was already in his pocket, curled around the grip of his pistol. “What?”

“If Sherlock is here, you should approach him with caution,” Mycroft said. “Especially if he has been held with iron.”

John frowned at him. “I don't understand.”

Mycroft sighed and gave John the slow-student look again. “When a dragon is placed under certain stresses—especially hunger, pain, or iron—his draconic instincts may become dominant over his human ones.”

A wave of cold washed over John's skin. This, he realized, was the reason Mycroft did not want the police to find Sherlock. He was afraid that after two days of captivity, Sherlock would—what? “What are you saying?” he asked carefully.

“I'm saying he might not be able to tell friend—from food.”

Once, John had heard Sherlock growl. The terrible sound had haunted his nightmares ever since, even after he learned the truth of Sherlock's nature. He shivered involuntarily at the memory, but forced the fear away. John had to remember that Sherlock was not just a dragon, but also his friend. John had to trust him.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said shortly, and kept walking.

Mycroft trailed him silently as far as the van, and then vanished around the side of the warehouse, hands in his pocket and stride as causual as if he was walking through a park. Wishing he had Sherlock at his back instead of Mycroft, John checked the car and van. Both were empty, but the engines were still warm. 

He glanced around the narrow lot. In the wall of the nearest warehouse, a rusting metal door stood barely ajar. John pulled his gun out of his pocket and started toward it. The doorknob rattled; John had a split second to throw himself aside before the door burst open. He caught a glimpse of two men, one tall and sandy-haired, the other shorter and broader. Then he saw the guns in their hands and started running.

A shot split the air behind him, and he ducked into the narrow gap between the van and the dark car. He heard a second shot, and a sharp pain stabbed through his neck. For a heartbeat he thought he'd been shot, but then realized it was only a sliver of pavement, sent flying by a bullet. He touched his hand to the side of his neck, and his fingers came away bloody.

He risked a glance through the van's windows. The sandy-haired man was still beside the door, but John could hear his shorter companion working his way around the van. The sandy-haired one let off another shot, shattering the passenger's-side window, and John dropped back into the relative safety of the van's shadow, his heart pounding. In a few seconds they would have him surrounded. He wondered how soon the police would get here. If Lestrade hurried, John thought wryly, he might arrive in time to hear John's dying words.

An engine revved, and gravel crunched under tires. There was a horrible crash, and Mycroft's car blew past John's hiding place. A body cartwheel over the hood of the car and smashed bonelessly to the ground beside the van. John looked at the body, and then looked away quickly. One of the gunmen, at least, was no longer a threat—and never would be again.

Bullets flew and glass shattered as the sandy-haired man shot at the retreating car. John threw himself into the open and fired. His first shot clipped the man's shoulder; his second punctured the man's left lung.

Ignoring the doctor's instincts that urged him to tend the wound he'd just created, John ran after Mycroft's car, stuffing his gun into his pocket. The back windshield was nothing more than a few shards of glass clinging to the frame, and the front bumper was bent where the car had swerved into the side of the warehouse. John wrenched open the driver's door, expecting to find Anthea, and instead found Molly cluching the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands.

“Oh, God,” she was saying, over and over. “Oh my God. Oh my God, oh my God—”

“Molly!” John took her by the shoulders and shook her. There was an ugly red mark across her chest from the seat belt but he couldn't see any other injuries. “Are you OK? Are you hurt?”

“What?” She stared at him, eyes wide and blank. “No, no I don't think so. I mean, yes—yes, I'm fine. That man....”

“He's dead,” Anthea said, from the passenger's seat. She stared at the bloody spiderwebs of cracks that marked the top of the windshield, her expression dazed. “He has to be.”

John reached around Molly and turned off the engine. “I want the two of you to go up to the road and wait for Lestrade. Do you understand?”

He waited until Molly gave a shaky nod before he turned away. He didn't like leaving them alone, but he needed to find Sherlock. He ran back to the door and eased it open, peering into the gloomy space inside. As he waited for his eyed to adjust, he heard a furious growl—a familiar growl. Sherlock.

He edged into the warehouse. A stack of rotting pallets screened him from the enormous room, and he peered through the splintered slats. The edges of the warehouse were lost in shadow, but John caught glimpses of abandonded appliances and heaps of trash. In the center of the space three people, two women and a man, stood together. At their feet, Sherlock struggled at the end of chain bolted into the floor. 

There was just enough space between Sherlock and his captors for John to get a clean shot. He slipped his gun out of his pocket and switched off the safety. Before he could aim one of the women, dressed in a leather jacket with her hair scraped back in a severe bun, spotted him. She lifted the gun in her hands and John flattened himself to floor as a bullet shredded the wood above his head. He ducked around the pallets and fired, but the second woman pulled a gun from beneath her blazer and forced him to return to cover.

The man, apparently alarmed at the gunfire, ducked behind the woman in the leather jacket. He tooked another step back, and another—and then shouted in alarm as Sherlock hooked his foot around the man's ankle and knocked him to the ground.

The woman in the leather jacket whirled, but the two men on the ground were too tangled for her to get a clear shot. She drew back a booted foot, waited, and then launched a powerful kick. If it connected, or had any effect, John didn't see it. He wasn't sure what Sherlock was doing—wasn't sure what Sherlock could do, with his hands cuffed behind his back—but whatever it was, the man was struggling and screaming.

He took advantage of her distraction to fire at the dark-skinned woman in the business suit. She ducked and his shot went wide, but after a brief glance at her companions, who were clearly in no position to help her, she turned and ran as fast as her high heels would let her. John let her go; with any luck Lestrade would be here any minute and catch her before she made it five blocks. 

There was no clear shot at the remaining kidnappers. John sprinted across the warehouse, hoping for a better angle, just as the other woman extracted the man from Sherlock's grip. She backed away from John, supporting her bloody companion with one arm and holding her gun with the other. She kept her weapon pointed at John's feet, clearly more interested in retreat than attack.

John mirrored her stance, keeping himself between her and Sherlock as she circled toward the door. “Where's the key?” he demanded.

She jerked her head, indicating the direction the other woman had run. “She has it.”

John searched her expression and decided she was probably telling the truth. “Damn,” he swore. He tried to guess how long it would take for Lestrade to get here, and how long it would take Lestrade to get the equipment needed to cut the chains. He could give chase instead of waiting, but he was unwilling to leave Sherlock alone.

She returned his scrutiny while he struggled to decide what he should do. She shifted her grip on the man who leaned, groaning, against her side, and slipped her free hand into her jacket pocket. John tensed, and from behind him Sherlock growled savagely. She said, “Easy!” and pulled out a slim wallet. Keeping her movements slow and gentle, she tossed the wallet to the ground between them.

“You might find that useful,” she said. Without taking her eyes from John, she towed her companion through the door.

The moment she was out of sight, John dropped to his knees beside Sherlock. His friend knelt on the concrete floor, staring fixedly at the spot where the woman had stood, as though he didn't realized she was gone. When John touched his shoulder, he jumped and hissed, snakelike, and John snatched back his hand in surprise. Even in his dragon form, Sherlock always acted like his normal, human self. 

But his surprise was not greater than his concern, or his years of medical training. He reached for Sherlock again, sliding his hands down Sherlock's sides, gently squeezing the skin of his forearm, running his fingers over Sherlock's scalp. He was careful not to touch the wound around Sherlock's neck, where the metal collar had cut into his flesh. Blood, fresh and dried, caked the edges of the collar and crusted the tips of Sherlock's tangled hair. Beneath the blood, the skin was red and blistered, as though burned. Yet more worrisome than this obvious wound was the inelasticity of Sherlock's skin when John squeezed it, a sign of severe dehydration.

“Why,” Sherlock rasped, “are you pinching me?”

“I'm making sure you're real,” John said. Sherlock's wrists were almost as raw as his neck, so John pressed his fingers against Sherlock's temple to check his pulse. His skin was slick with sweat, but cold to the touch, and his normally bright eyes were dull and sunken. Where Sherlock's body pressed against him, John could feel him shivering.

“Iron,” Sherlock croaked. His voice was hoarse and cracked, the word barely understandable. “John, the iron. You have to get the chains off.”

“That might be a little difficult,” John said, examining the cuffs and collar. Sherlock grimaced as the metal pressed against his raw skin. “The key's run off. But don't worry: Lestrade will be here soon, and we'll get something to cut these off.”

“You don't understand,” Sherlock said, sounding desperate. It was not a sound John was used to hearing from him. “I need them off _now_.” He tugged at his bound wrists, and the futility of the gesture seemed to panic him. He twisted away from John's side, struggling against the restraints with the frantic mindlessness of an animal in a trap. His labored breaths hissed between clenched teeth. Fresh blood trickled from his neck and wrists.

“Sherlock!” John grabbed his shoulders and held him down until his struggles slowed. With a visible effort, Sherlock slowed his breathing and focused his eyes on John's face.

“Hold on,” John told him, feeling a little frantic himself. He knew human medicine, but humans didn't react like this to iron. As Mycroft had warned, Sherlock was reacting like a dragon, not a human—and John didn't know a thing about treating dragons.

In desperation, he snatched up the wallet the woman had left and flipped it open. Inside he found a set of shiny lockpicks. He ran his thumb wonderingly across the various hooks and pins. _You might find this useful_ , the woman had said. Why had she tried to help them? Though perhaps, he thought ruefully, she hadn't helped them at all. He had no idea how to use the tools. He was sure Sherlock did, but Sherlock couldn't pick the locks to his own cuffs and was clearly in no condition to walk John through the process.

“Would these help?”

John looked up, startled, and Sherlock stiffened. Mycroft stood over them, dangling two keys on a ring. He looked as cool and unruffled as ever, but John noticed his umbrella was missing. Sherlock forced himself upright and tried to look like he wasn't leaning against John for support.

“Where did you get those?” John demanded.

“I had the good fortune to encounter one of Sherlock's... hosts... as she left. She was kind enough to give me the keys.”

John wondered whether the woman's “kindness” was prompted by a gun or by claws and teeth. He stretched out his hand. “Give them to me.”

Mycroft wrapped his fingers around around the keys, hiding them from sight. “I don't think that would be a good idea. Remember what I told you.”

John stood up, his hand still outstretched in silent demand. “Give me the keys, Mycroft.” He knew his tone was aggressive, perhaps more aggressive than was wise when facing a man who wasn't a man at all. He didn't care; Sherlock was suffering.

Mycroft studied his face for a moment, and whatever he saw there seemed to decide him. He dropped the keys into John's palm. John knelt beside Sherlock and fitted one of the keys into the lock on the cuffs.

“You're making a mistake,” Mycroft warned.

Sherlock growled at Mycroft, a sound that seemed too large for his body. John hesitated with his hands on Sherlock's wrists. _He might not be able to tell friend from food_ , Mycroft's voice whispered in his head. John ignored the voice and twisted the key. The lock clicked open, and John carefully eased the cuffs off Sherlock's bloody wrists.

“I am serious, John,” Mycroft said, a little louder. “As soon as you remove the iron, Sherlock will transform. In this state, he's incapable of preventing the change, and likely unable to control himself once the change is complete. You will be in serious danger—and so will the police, who, from the sound of things, will be here shortly.”

This time John didn't hesitate, though he could hear sirens in the distance. He fitted the second key into the padlock under Sherlock's chin, but Sherlock stopped him with a hand on his arm. His eyes were serious, but underneath John could see the panic—and something darker—still inside him.

“John,” he said, his voice strained, “as much I hate to admit it, Mycroft may be right.”

John looked Sherlock straight in the eye, knowing what it must have cost Sherlock to say that. Their faces were only inches apart, and he could see Sherlock's pupil was slitted and reptilian. It should have been frightening, but John felt calm and unafraid. “I trust you,” he said. As irrational as it was, he knew Sherlock would never hurt him. He knew the same way he knew the sun would rise in the east tomorrow morning. 

He pulled the padlock free of the collar.

“John—” Sherlock said again.

“John—” Mycroft began.

John gently prised open the collar and threw it aside. 

Before the circle of metal could hit the floor, Sherlock began to transform. The change happened faster than John had ever seen it before, almost violently. He scrambled out of the way as Sherlock's body grew and twisted, sprouting wings and a tail, replacing dirty clothes with sleek scales. 

He towered over John, larger than the panel van parked outside, smoke curling from his nostrils, wings mantled. There was a distinctly predatory gleam in his dinner plate-sized eyes, and John wondered whether he had made a terrible mistake. His hand closed instinctively around the gun in his pocket, but he knew he couldn't shoot Sherlock. Screaming and running away seemed appealing, but he knew that wasn't an option, either. He forced himself to stand his ground as Sherlock stalked closer, tail lashing, and he found himself trapped between Sherlock's paws.

Mycroft had retreated to the other side of the warehouse. “Whatever you do, John,” he warned, “Don't run.”

“Thanks, Mycroft, for that brilliant advice,” John snapped. His moment of fear had been nothing more than instinct and reflex. Now that the initial shock had worn off, he could see that Sherlock's stance was protective, not predatory. In fact, he was pretty sure Mycroft was in more danger than he was.

Sure enough, Sherlock bared fangs as long as John's forearm at Mycroft and hissed savagely. Mycroft tried to look unconcerned, but John could see he was wary. John craned his neck, trying to see Sherlock's face, but his attention was diverted. Where his long, serpentine neck flowed into his sloping shoulders and deeply keeled chest, a wide band of scales was blackened and broken. Blood, thicker and darker than a human's, leaked from between them.

Without thinking, John reached out his hand to examine the wound, dismayed by the extent of the damage. Sherlock twitched like a horse bothered by a fly and rumbled in warning. Undaunted, John said, “You need to change back so I can treat these.”

Sherlock craned his neck in a way no human could possibly—or possibly want—to achieve, bringing one slit-pupiled blue eye to John's level. “Are you hurt?” he asked. “I can smell your blood.”

John touched the side of his neck briefly and tried not to think too hard about what Sherlock had just said. “It's just a scratch. I'm more concerned about you. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“I don't need a hospital,” Sherlock growled.

In this form, when Sherlock growled, he was actually growling: John felt the sound reverberate through his sternum. John would have preferred to take Sherlock to a hospital, where he could get an IV, but given the state—and the form—he was in, John didn't see how he could force him to go. “Fine,” he said. “We'll go home and I'll take care of you. But you still need to change back.”

“Preferrably before the police arrive,” Mycroft put in, from the other side of the warehouse.

“They already have,” Sherlock said. “I can hear Lestrade outside.” He blew out a sigh that filled the air around him with acrid smoke and made John cough. Then he began to change.

If the previous transformation had been the fastest change John had ever seen Sherlock make, this was the slowest—and most painful. As a doctor, he could not help be fascinated by the slow-motion view of muscles sliding beneath skin, bones shortening and bending. As a friend, he was dismayed by every grinding bone, every strained gasp and strangled whimper. By the time the change was complete, Sherlock was trembling with fatigue. 

Afraid he was about to collapse, John hurried forward and slid an arm around his shoulders. He expected Sherlock to pull away, or protest that he didn't need help, but to his surprise Sherlock leaned gratefully against him. The gesture, so vulnerable and so unlike Sherlock, almost undid him. He squeezed Sherlock's shoulders gently and said, “It's over now. Let's get you home.”


	14. Fear & Iron, Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone pointed out that Sherlock's black-gray-blue color scheme doesn't really match Smaug's red. That's because I never really intended for Sherlock to literally be Smaug, but I realize describing this story as a Smaug!lock fic is kinda misleading. So I've changed the summary, and this is now officially a dragon!lock fic!
> 
> Now, I realize I set you guys up for a lot of BAMF!dragon!Sherlock, and then didn't deliver. Sorry! I just didn't feel like this was the right venue for Sherlock to go all “I am fire, I am death.” I've also received requests for dragon!Mycroft. Don't worry! It'll happen eventually :) In the meantime, enjoy some more BAMF!Molly—and a hint of things to come.

“We can't just sit here!”

“Of course we can.” Anthea didn't look up from her smartphone, but Molly knew she wasn't really paying attention to anything on the screen. The other woman was just scrolling blindly—fidgeting. “I can't believe Mycroft talked me into coming this far.”

Molly stared at her. “Your friend just walked into a warehouse that's probably full of armed men, and you don't even care?”

Anthea shrugged. “He's my boss, not my friend.” But her finger flicked restlessly across the surface of her phone, belying her unconcern.

Then the first shot rang out.

Molly froze. Anthea dropped her phone. The sound was impossibly loud, shockingly relevant—not distant and abstract, like in the movies. 

The second shot snapped Molly out of her daze. She grabbed Anthea's arm, her heart already pounding. “Come on! We have to do something!”

Anthea stared wildly at her. “What? Do what?”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Molly knew she had a plan—she just had no idea what it was. She was operating on nothing but instinct and adrenaline, and she hoped that was enough. “Give me the keys!”

Anthea jumped out of the car and Molly scrambled into the driver's seat. As she started the engine, Anthea climbed into the passenger's side. Molly spared her a glance. “You don't have to come.”

“I—I think I do, actually.”

Molly felt a surge of gratitude toward her. She had only met Anthea a few hours ago, but she was thankful she didn't have to do this—whatever this was—alone. She offered Anthea a shaky smile and said, “You'd better buckle up.”

She put the car into drive eased around the corner of the warehouse until the white van and the sleek black car came into view. She immediately saw two strange men, their backs to her, circling around the white van. She caught a glimpse of John, peering through the windows of the van. One of the men fired at him, and the window shattered into a cascade of shards.

There was no time to think, no time to analyze the situation or consider the consequences of her actions. Molly slammed her foot on the gas pedal and the car leaped forward, aimed straight at one of the men. _I won't be able to do it_ , she thought, very calmly and clearly. _I'll lose my nerve and hit the brakes, or swerve. This isn't actually going to happen. This isn't happening_.

At the last minute she scrunched her eyes shut and turned her face away, but her foot kept the gas pedal pressed to the floor and her hands held the steering wheel steady. There was a terrible _thump_ and _crash_. The force of the impact passed through the frame of the car, jolting her. Now, finally, she did slam on the brakes and swerve. The car fetched up almost gently against the side of the warehouse.

_The airbags didn't deploy_ , Molly thought. She started doing calculations in her head, trying to figure out if the force of the impact should have been great enough to cause them to deploy. It didn't occur to her that this was a strange thing to be thinking about until John started shaking her.

“Are you OK?” John was saying anxiously. “Are you hurt?”

“What?” She stared at him, eyes wide. She hadn't even seen him open the car door. “No, no I don't think so. I mean, yes—yes, I'm fine.” Now that John had jarred her out of her shock, she was beginning to realize what she had done. “That man....”

“He's dead,” Anthea said, from the passenger's seat. She stared at the top of the windshield, where a bloody spiderwebs of cracks marked the body's second impact with the car. “He has to be.”

John reached around Molly and turned off the engine. “I want the two of you to go up to the road and wait for Lestrade. Do you understand?”

Molly nodded, more because he clearly wanted her to than because she really understood. She desperately wanted to stay in the car, because if she went up to the road she would have to walk by the body of the man she had struck. She was no stranger to death and dead bodies—she worked in a morgue, for goodness' sake! Yet somehow being responsible for the death changed everything.

More shots rang out from the warehouse, one after another. Anthea tugged at Molly's arm. “Come on, we have to get out of here. It's not safe.”

She allowed Anthea to urge her out of the car and away from the crumpled body on the pavement. Yet when Anthea tried to lead her toward the road she hestitated, looking at the open door in the side of the warehouse. 

“What if he needs our help?”

“What are we going to do?” Anthea asked practically. “We only had the one car. We'd only get in the way.”

Relieved that someone else had made the decision for her, Molly allowed herself to be led, bt only a few seconds later she saw movement in the warehouse doorway. She grabbed Anthea at the same moment Anthea grabbed her, and they both ducked around the corner of the warehouse and flattened themselves against the cinderblock wall. 

After a few breathless seconds, Molly risked a glance around the corner. A woman was helping a man into the backseat of the sleek black car, which had miraculously escaped the gunfight unscathed. Once the man was settled, the woman climbed into the driver's seat and peeled out of the parking lot in a cloud of rubber smoke.

Molly stared after the car in dismay. “They're getting away!”

“So?” Anthea asked. “Let the police catch them. That's their job.”

“No!” Molly shook her head. “If they're leaving—why didn't John and Mycroft stop them?”

Anthea was unconvinced. “Maybe they found Sherlock. Maybe they caught the ringleader and those two were just henchmen.”

Molly felt sick. She wanted to go up to the road, to wait in safety for Lestrade to arrive and make everything better. She didn't want to walk into a warehouse where people might shoot at her and her friends might already be dead. 

“I have to go in there,” she said, and didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until Anthea shook her head violently.

“Don't be stupid, Molly!” Anthea said. “What can you possibly do to help them?”

“You should go up to road,” Molly told her, and turned back to the warehouse. She secretly hoped Anthea would come with her again, but when she reached the door of the warehouse she was alone. Alone and very, very afraid.

She slipped through the door without touching it, afraid the hinges might squeak and give her away. Inside, the warehouse was cavernous, dark, and quiet. She hovered on the threshold, shielded from the rest of the room by a stack of pallets, while she waited for her eyes to adjust. There were several people speaking quietly, and after a moment she recognized their voices.

_Sherlock's alive!_ was her first, jubilant thought. She was about to step into the open when Mycroft's words stopped her.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

Molly hesitated, puzzled by Mycroft's grim tone. Why would Mycroft speak like that to John or Sherlock? Was there someone else in the warehouse? Her puzzlement turned to fear when she hear something growl.

When she was child, her parents' neighbors had a bad-tempered rottweiler that snarled and lunged at her whenever she walked past their fence. One day it got loose and chased her down the street. She narrowly escaped by climbing a tree, but the beast had barked and leaped at her from the base of her refuge for nearly half an hour before someone rescued her. For years she'd been afraid of dogs, but the fear had faded and softened with time, until she thought it was gone entirely.

Now the fear returned as strongly as on that long-ago day. Suddenly Molly was ten years old again, tree bark biting into her palms as the beast jumped and snapped at her ankles. Unable to stand, she slid to the floor of the warehouse and stuffed her fist into her mouth to muffle a sob. _If it hears me...._ Tears pricked her eyes and she struggled to breathe. 

“I am serious, John,” she heard Mycroft say, over the roaring in her ears. “As soon as you remove the iron, Sherlock will transform. You will be in serious danger—and so will the police, who, from the sound of things, will be here shortly.”

Curiosty helped her push away the some of the fear. _I am not ten years old_ , she told herself firmly. _I just killed a man with a car. I can handle this._

She took a deep breath to steady herself and leaned around the pallets, peering into the center of the room. John and Sherlock knelt together, Mycroft standing a short distance away. Sherlock was chained to the floor by a metal collar around his neck, but as Molly watched John carefully removed the collar. Then he scrambled back as Sherlock began to twist and writhe.

For a moment she thought he was having some kind of seizure. Then his body began to grow and stretch. Gray and black scales covered his skin. His shoulders and the base of his spine bulged, growing into wings and tail. His face elongated into a muzzle filled with fangs. The transformation was swift and violent: in only a few seconds, there was no trace of the man Molly had known for years. 

She closed her eyes and opened them again. She pinched herself. She bit her lip until she tasted blood. Nothing changed: Sherlock Holmes was still a dragon.


	15. Seeing is Not Believing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock deduces Mary... and misses something important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long absence—an update! I apologize for being silent for so long, and for giving you such a short chapter to make up for it. But series three just devastated my muse, and I've been struggling to make any headway with this fic. But hopefully things will look up, hm? Be sure to check out the note at the end!

Sherlock Holmes didn't expect Mary Morstan. To start with, he didn't expect John to go out and _find_ someone like Mary. When he thought about John during his long exile destroying Moriarty's network—which was more often than he'd care to admit—he imagined John at their Baker Street flat, living much as he had when Sherlock was there—minus Sherlock, of course. But more importantly, he didn't expect John to go out and find someone _like_ Mary. If he thought about someone else sharing John's life—which was almost never—he imagined someone like the many girlfriends who had come and gone: uninteresting, unsuitable, and most of all, temporary.

He _saw_ her, there at the table in the restaurant, but he did not _observe_. Sherlock had berated John for this very failing many times, and was horrified to find it in himself. His only excuse was—well, there was no excuse. Even later, at the deli, he remained almost oblivious to her presence. When he said, his voice muffled by the tissue pressed against his bloody nose, “I said I'm sorry, isn't that what you're supposed to do?”, he was no more talking to her than he was to the lampost.

“Gosh, you don't know anything about human nature, do you?”

He'd half-forgotten she was there. “Nature, no,” he said. “Human?” He lingered over the second half of the question, amused by the irony of it. He wondered what she would do if she understood just how little he really knew about humans. “No.”

“I'll talk him 'round,” Mary said, matter-of-fact.

Sherlock pulled the tissue away from his face. “You will?”

She smiled confidently. “Oh, yeah.”

He really looked at her, then, curious about this woman who was so sure of herself, and John, and him. He saw

_linguist, part-time nurse, guardian, only child, shortsighted, liar, clever, Dem, bakes own bread, secret tattoo, Lib, romantic, scar, appendix removed, not human, size 12, cat lover, disillusioned_

but once again, he failed to observe.

At the time, he thought he knew everything. Later, he would blame himself for missing the clues. He should have known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't made up my mind as to what, precisely, Mary is. If you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it. You never know—it might tickle my muse's fancy!


	16. The Exchange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Leinster Gardens, John learns the truth about Mary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It lives! I finally got around to watching “The Abominable Bride” and my muse was much inspired. Hopefully I'll get several more chapters out of it, but at least there's this one. The title comes from the song “The Exchange” by Torres, and I found the Sherlock transcripts on Ariane DeVere's LiveJournal to be very helpful while writing this.

He didn't believe it. It wasn't that he thought Sherlock was lying, precisely. Sherlock had no reason to lie, not about this. And it wasn't that he thought Sherlock was wrong, either. Sherlock had looked his shooter right in the face, and there was no way anyone—especially Sherlock Holmes—could be mistaken at that distance. He just didn't believe Mary had shot him, didn't believe Mary could be what Sherlock said she was.

He played along though, for Sherlock's sake—Sherlock, who was so sure he was right, and looked so fragile with his too-pale skin and too-dark circles under his eyes. John had been unable to convince him to return to the hospital, or even to the flat. So John agreed to go along to Leinster Gardens to make sure he didn't overexert himself, and to be there when he inevitably collapsed—and, if he was honest himself, to silence that quiet, suspicious whisper in the back of his mind: _Claire de Lune_...

He knew something was wrong, terribly wrong as soon as Mary answered the phone. Sherlock had set up John's cell phone so he could overhear their conversation, and Mary's voice, rising flat and tinny from the earpiece, was all indefinably off. “ _Where are you?_ ” Too calm, too confident. She should have sounded confused, concerned, upset by Sherlock's strange games and his hostile tone. That was when John began to doubt.

“If you are what I think you are,” Sherlock said. And, “Just a facade. Remind you of anyone?” And Mary never once challenged him, never denied his insinuations. That was when John truly doubted.

She stepped through the false door, into the narrow corridor that was all that remained of the house. At the far end, wearing Sherlock's coat and sitting in a wheelchair, a morphine drip at his elbow, John watched her walk toward him. She was unmistakably Mary, yet not: her movements were too poised, too taught. It was the same, familiar stride John would recognize anywhere, and yet somehow utterly different. That was when John began to believe.

“Mary Morstan was born in October 1972,” Sherlock said, his voice low in John's ear. “Only days later she was kidnapped and replaced by a fetch, a piece of wood enchanted to resembled a baby, which soon sickened and died. Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery where, five years ago, you acquired her name and identity. That's why you don't have 'friends' prior to that date.”

It was like figuring out Sherlock was a dragon all over again, but a hundred times worse. “ _An orphan's lot,_ ” Mary had said. How could John not have seen it? How could he have missed the signs?

“It's an old enough technique, known to the kinds of people who can recognize a skip-code on sight and have extraordinarily retentive memories,” Sherlock continued, merciless. “But there was more, wasn't there? You're one of the creatures that stole the real Mary Morstan. That made it easier to pass as her, to pass as human.”

“You were very slow,” Mary said. That was when John believed. Even before she pulled out the gun, that was when he believed.


End file.
